PAT GARRETT & BILL THE KID(1973 Western directed by Sam Peckinpah) and BLADE RUNNER(1982 sci-fi directed by Ridley Scott)couldn’t be more different in most respects but have in common the figure of the Reluctant Killer. And this passive/aggressive aspect of their action/violence may have foredoomed their box office failure. Generally, we prefer action to be dynamic and forward-thrusting. We want the rush of emotions, the sensation of hurtling toward destruction or victory. In contrast, the main characters of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID and BLADE RUNNER move as though sedated or chained to dead weight. Their fingers are on the trigger but their hearts aren’t in the game. In contrast, THE GODFATHER, though not the most exciting or fast-paced movie, focuses our attention on the steely resolve of its characters to play and win. Michael Corleone may seem soft-spoken, but he’s playing for keeps. Similarly, the suspense of CHINATOWN engages our emotions, even igniting a sense of hope that Jake(Nicholson)-as-convert-from-cynic-to-good-guy just might prevail over the forces of evil and save the beleaguered woman(as was originally intended in Robert Towne’s script). Gradual or hurried, there’s a forward-moving momentum in some movies, and those movies tend to be the most popular with audiences. Similarly, people prefer symphonies with a ‘beginning’, ‘middle’, and ‘end’ or the grand finale. Sam Peckinpah delivered such movies with THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS. Tensions, anxieties, and suspense pile on, finally culminating in the grand finale of bloodletting. The ‘heroes’ may ultimately get themselves battered or killed, but we enjoy the thrill; the climax delivers what the narrative promised.
Some movies seem to be moving in such a direction but then shift gears, and perhaps there’s no better example than APOCALYPSE NOW, which is actually three films in one, with film one ending with the great helicopter assault on a Viet Cong village, with film two comprising the long boat journey, and film three sinking into pointless drudgery and morass at Kurtz’s jungle fortress. Even the detractors of the movie love part one while even the most ardent defenders have a hard time justifying part three. Anyway, it’s part two of Coppola’s movie, with its brooding passive-aggressiveness, that’s most like PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID and BLADE RUNNER. Willard(Martin Sheen) turns out to be a reluctant killer, especially as the prolonged journey makes him ever more intrigued with figure of Kurtz. Willard feels little personal or political animus against Kurtz and would rather understand him than kill him ― or at least understand him before killing him. Anyway, if APOCALYPSE NOW finally recouped its costs at the box office, it was largely due to the film’s first part that carried the bulk of the momentum and action. Another movie that is similar to PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID and BLADE RUNNER is Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. To be sure, Noodles(DeNiro), unlike Pat Garrett(James Coburn) or Deckard(Harrison Ford), doesn’t know that he’s a hired killer ― only at the end does he discover that Max(James Woods)sought him out to have himself(Max) killed. But Noodles, like Garrett and Deckard, is a passive/aggressive character, a man capable of ruthless action but burdened with doubt. All three characters rely on ‘drugs’ to drown out the pain or confusion. The younger Noodles sucks on an opium pipe, the older Noodles is immersed in the narcotic of memory. Garrett is a heavy drinker, and Deckard uses alcohol-as-tranquilizer in his apartment.
But even when they’re not on ‘drugs’, their moods seem immersed in the strangeness of existence in alienated worlds. Paradoxically, however, they and their worlds are perfectly matched because both are, by their very nature, incongruous with ‘normality’; they are outsiders in a world of uncertain truths. Likewise, Travis Bickle and NY are lovers precisely because they are enemies. Bickle is a square freak, i.e. too much of a freak for normal society and too much of a square for urban life. New York is a city open to all but welcome to none.
There’s nothing strange about a gangster using drugs or, for that matter, a Western gunman or noir detective drinking alcohol. What makes PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, BLADE RUNNER, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA eccentric is the ‘drugs’ are not merely used as motifs or mannerisms to signify (anti)heroes as outlaws, violators, or rough men. Instead, the drugginess itself is the main character in the three movies ― as is the case with VERTIGO and WICKER PARK, which feature love/desire as perhaps the most potent drug of all, powerful enough to take on a life of its own; Scotty(James Stewart) in VERTIGO goes from a rational character in control of his life to a helpless vessel of strange dark emotions; he becomes the heroin junkie of love; THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, on the other hand, shows how a man can be ‘drugged’ into of zombie-state of zero emotions, coldly killing even the person he loves most; Frankenheimer, its director, later made FRENCH CONNECTION II where Popeye Doyle(Gene Hackman)is turned into a heroin junkie by drug dealers who abduct him.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, BLADE RUNNER, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA are bigger on mood than story and action. Nothing much happens in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, and it’s no surprise that Pat Garrett kills Billy in the end. And, though Deckard stalks the Replicants, much of the violence is accidental, and most of the movie dwells on melancholy and disorientation aided by the opiate of Vangelis’s futuristic cocktail lounge music. ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA veers between power and dreams, between action and reflection, between ruthlessness and ruefulness. Sometimes the two converge ― money can buy dreams ― , and sometimes they diverge ― dreams are priceless and cannot be bought. It is money that enables Noodles to take Debra out to a fancy dinner, but it is Noodle’s criminality that turns Debra away. She wants to be famous and respectable, and so she goes off to Hollywood, but in the end, the empire of her dreams turns out to be a den of thieves.
All three films dwell on what might be called ‘illegal alienation’. Pat Garrett is a sheriff serving the ‘electorate’ to enforce law and order; he’s setting up fences and taming the wilderness. He’s for rules and regulations, borders and barriers, that will transform the Southwest territories from a no man’s land ― or every man’s land ― of Americans, Mexicans, cowboys, rustlers, and hustlers into fiefdom governed by the Law(controlled by ‘powerful interests’). Yet, given his true nature ― a former ‘outlaw’ and friend of Billy ― , the very world that Garrett is helping to bring about has no place for him, i.e. he himself will become ‘illegal’ in the legal world he’s working to create.
BLADE RUNNER too is about Illegal Alienation. The Replicants feel alienated ON Earth because they are the products OF Earth ― namely the Tyrell corporation ― banned FROM Earth. They were created by men on Earth ― to be ‘exploited’ for space exploration and settlement ― , but they are never to return to Earth. So, Replicants back on Earth are both ‘at home’ and in an alien land. (Similarly, Taylor in THE PLANET OF THE APES realizes that he’s both back home and forever exiled from home.) No wonder that Batty sees Tyrell as both life-giver and life-destroyer, both as ‘father’ and ‘fucker’.
There’s a certain parallel between Batty’s search for Tyrell and Noodle’s search for Mr. Bailey, who turns out to be Max. Though Batty ultimately kills Tyrell while Noodles doesn’t kill Max, the two pairs of men are lover/enemies. Tyrell is proud of Batty as one of his greatest creations, but his limitless ambition for perfection-beyond-perfection prevents any emotional attachment to his creations, no matter how advanced and ‘more human than human’ they may be. Tyrell is like the ‘selfish gene’ of biotechnology, willing to sacrifice any number of his creations to arrive at the yet-more-superior. Batty calls Tyrell ‘father’ ― at least in the Final Cut, as he’s heard calling Tyrell ‘fucker’ in the Theatrical Version ― , and there’s an element of awe and respect in their meeting. But when Tyrell cannot help him ― or won’t help him ― , Batty burns with rage and kills him most cruelly; yet in that cruelty is evidence of emotions beyond mere hate. Batty feels betrayed from realization that his ‘father’ has no feelings for him. It’s somewhat like EAST OF EDEN with estranged mother and son. Thus, the ‘orphan’ longing for the parent truly becomes an orphan by slaying the derelict parent, thereby liberating himself from all illusion of ‘natural affection’ ― a concept especially perverse between Tyrell and Batty because the latter is an artificial being created to possess natural emotions ― that’s supposed to exist between parent and child. The element of Illegal Alienation makes BLADE RUNNER appealing to both pro-immigration people and anti-immigration people. The multi-cultural/racial wasteland of future L.A. resembles nothing like an America we want to live in; it looks like Japan inhabited by Third Worlders; the only good thing is there aren’t too many Negroes.
On the other hand, for those with ‘leftist’ sympathies, the Replicants, who go from villains to tragic heroes, may be identified or sympathized with as Third World illegals exploited by the First World but kept as perennial outsiders. But then, given their ‘Aryan’ looks and stature, they could also be seen as the last hurrah of white beauty and power in the world’s twilight leap into the multi-cultural abyss.
Illegal alienation exists on many levels in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. There’s the cultural tension between being Jewish and non-Jewish(in a nation founded by and mostly populated by non-Jews). There’s also the illegal trespassing upon the hallowed grounds of friendship, i.e. Max betrays the trust and oversteps his bounds, killing two of his friends while exiling the third. There’s also the tension between dream and reality(in their mutual infiltrations of each other’s space). Noodles is an odd case because he’s perpetually stuck in the terminal between reality and dreams. Unlike Diane Selwyn of MULHOLLAND DR., he’s too sane to lurch off completely into the dream zone, but then, he’s too moody and withdrawn to find firm footing in reality.
Time also plays a role in the logic of Illegal Alienation. As the saying goes, ‘the past is a foreign country’. Yet, for many, it’s also a native country from which they were exiled and to which they wish to return; in some corner of the psyche, it is their ‘real home’, dearer than the present time & place that they occupy. Noodles is like a double ‘illegal alien’; his past intrudes into the present and vice versa. And there’s the element of ‘illegal alienation’ in love because to love means to infiltrate, penetrate, and/or conquer through the walls of another’s heart. There is an element of intrusion in the physical act of sex itself, i.e. the man must ‘violate’ and ‘invade’ the body of the woman to conceive a new reality. In a way, the conception and birth of a child are, at once, the most ‘native’ and most ‘alien’ experiences of life. When a man and a woman, who’d previously been strangers, come together as one, there’ a sense of sacred enclosed community, or ‘home sweet home’. That strangers can form such bonds ― indeed stronger than one between a person and his/her lifelong family members, relatives, and friends ― through love/romance tells us something about the power of sexuality. Yet, there is an element of busting taboos and destruction in sexual bonding as well. For a woman to go from daddy’s girl to husband’s gal, she must undergo the process of sexual surrender to the man. A girl who’d been sexually protected by her father must sexually be invaded by her husband. From this arises a new sense of home, one apart from the one she grew up in. As for the man, if his relation to his mother was non-sexual and dependent(especially as a helpless baby), he subconsciously seeks to overcome the memory of dependence upon a female(the mother) by conquering a female through sex. Our moral institutions cushion the violation of family taboos to enable the formation of new families. Thus, husband and wife form a new ‘home’ away from original homes. Two people who had been strangers/aliens to one another draw close into a powerful bond, and as time passes, they become more ‘alien’ to family/friends who’d once been dear to them. And together, they have children who themselves are weird critters. On the one hand, children are the physical manifestations of their home-sweet-home bond between man and wife. On the other hand, kids are the ‘aliens’ that come between man and woman. Some men even feel jealous of the baby during pregnancy. And pregnant women almost feel as though some alien creatures have taken over their bodies. Though there is nothing more dear to a mother than her children, it’s also true that few things are as stressful and taxing to a woman’s psyche as pregnancy and childbirth. Even as the woman thinks, “this is my kid”, another part of her wonders, “what is happening to me?”, as if she’s been invaded by some monster-critter. Thus, purely on a psychological level, the ALIEN movies speak to this fear that people, especially women, have. This is why issues surrounding abortion are so contentious. It’s not just about the unborn fetus or baby in question but the nature of womanhood. And there are weird paradoxes in the debate. Pro-Choice feminists say abortion should be left up to the woman because she should have control over her own body. Yet, if it’s her body and the child growing inside her is part of herself, why does she see it as some alien infestation or tumor to get rid of? Is the fetus a part of her body or not? If it is, why should she want to destroy it? Isn’t it destroying a part of oneself? After all, should people be allowed to chop off their own arms or legs because they should have control over their own bodies? Or gouge their own eyes out? Personally, I’m not a dogmatist on this issue either way. Though abortions are grisly and unpleasant, it’d still be better if most Negroes and stupid white liberals aborted their kids.
It’s complicated between Noodles and Debra in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA because while her heart is open to his affections, her eyes are fixed on bigger things, and so her pussy is closed to his passions, which is why he ‘illegally invades’ her by force. But the most serious ‘illegal penetration’ in the film is psychological, with Max planting poison seeds in Noodles’s mind that bloom into false flowers.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID and BLADE RUNNER not only failed at the box office but shared the common fate of being altered by the studio, and a good deal of controversy has surrounded both, culminating in subsequent more ‘definitive’ versions. Both films came to be known essentially in three versions. PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID came out in the theatrical version, Turner 1988 version ― aka “Director’s Cut” ― , and the latest version assembled by Paul Seydor on the latest DVD version(which also includes the Turner 1988 version; the theatrical version hasn’t yet been made available).
The initial theatrical release of BLADE RUNNER came with a voice-over narration track and a ‘happy ending’ added at the last moment using out-takes from the footage shot for THE SHINING’s opening scene. The Director’s Cut, which came out in the early 90s, got rid of the narration, added a dream sequence, and nixed the ‘happy ending’. Then came the Final Cut, which is a refurbished Director’s Cut with improved sound/image and re-shot scene of Zhora smashing through shop window glasses. Since Scott himself supervised the Final Cut, it can be recognized as the definitive edition of the film.
It’s not so simple with PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID since Peckinpah died in 1984, and the re-assemblages of later editions were done as guess-works of Peckinpah’s intentions. For some reason, the Turner 1988 version misses some key scenes in the theatrical version while what I call the ‘Seydor version’ left out some scenes in the Turner 1988 version. As far as I’m concerned, the best option is to assemble all the available footage together and let the viewer decide what is good, bad, appropriate, or not. If such version were ever to be made available, it should simply be called the ‘complete version’ and not the “director’s cut” since we have no way of knowing what Peckinpah would have done if he’d been given the chance to edit the film exactly the way he wanted.
Both PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID and BLADE RUNNER have been called flawed masterpieces. Personally, I don’t think PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID qualifies as a masterpiece ― though it may as a ‘masterwork’ ― , and its problems aren’t limited to a few scenes and/or details. It is a FUNDAMENTALLY flawed movie, in some ways profoundly ridiculous. However, the good things in the movie are among the best that Peckinpah ever put on celluloid. The theatrical version of BLADE RUNNER is indeed problematic, but the ‘flaws’ are not fatal. Though I’m glad the voice-over narration was removed in the Director’s Cut, it had a certain charm. And though the ‘happy ending’ seems more like an afterthought, it doesn’t entirely destroy the spirit of the movie that balances tragedy with romance, darkness with light; after all, if the ruthless killing machine Batty had within himself the nobility of heart to spare Deckard ― a kind of miracle ― and if Gaff, who could have killed Rachel himself, chose to let her live ― another small miracle ― , who’s to say happiness is entirely impossible for Deckard and Rachel? Even so, I prefer the taut ambiguous ending of the Director’s Cut, not least out of respect for the auteur’s vision.
Anyway, the Final Cut of BLADE RUNNER is for me a near perfect film, a true masterpiece among masterpieces. Whatever its problems of logic ― it is sci-fi after all ― and conception, it is one of the miracles in film history, the kind that happens only once a decade ― or several decades within the genre of sci-fi. Since its release, only A.I. and TRON LEGACY are comparable in conception, imagination, and realization in the sci-fi genre. (Movies like ATTACK OF THE CLONES and MATRIX REVOLUTIONS are amazing as fireworks but not much else.) BLADE RUNNER has been like a child who was adopted by the wrong family and led astray until the true father showed up to reclaim and make him into what he was born to be. Unlike Tyrell with Batty, Scott didn’t abandon the greatest child of his imagination.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, in contrast, is an abortion, and for all the controversy surrounding James Aubrey as the stock villain of the story, most of the blame must go to Peckinpah. Whatever the problems with the Theatrical version forced on Peckinpah by the MGM, its biggest weaknesses owe to Peckinpah’s ridiculous half-drunken view of life and near insane view of the West. Though the main ‘social’ theme of the movie is the corruption of the West under the influence of ‘big business’ and the ‘Law’, the movie really conveys the danger of creative indulgence and artistic corruption. The Peckinpah that directed PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, coming off the successes of and accolades for THE WILD BUNCH, STRAW DOGS, and THE GETAWAY, saw himself as a genius and prophet, an important ‘artist’, and a philosopher of the West. He took himself too seriously, as if every syllable of his alcoholic rant carried great meaning about the nature of man, human condition, freedom and tyranny, and etc. By ‘artistic corruption’, I don’t mean ‘greed for money’ or even necessarily ‘greed for fame and praise’. Artistic corruption sneaks up on an artist when he takes himself more seriously than the subject at hand, as if art exists to serve his ego than vice versa. Of course, ego is a big part of creativity, and every great artist has a big ego. But as Harry Callahan said in MAGNUM FORCE, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”
Artistic corruption undermined works as varied as Kurosawa’s RED BEARD, Fellini’s JULIET OF THE SPIRITS, Bergman’s PASSION OF ANNA and FACE TO FACE, Coppola’s ONE FROM THE HEART and RUMBLE FISH, Tarkovksy’s THE SACRIFICE, and Woody Allen’s ‘serious’ films. This doesn’t mean these films are necessarily worthless or without (elements of)greatness. The problem is the fallacy some artists meander into: because they achieved rare greatness in their earlier works, they think whatever that flows out of their imagination has great value. The reason why artistic corruption isn’t easy to spot as corruption is the sincerity on the part of the artist. After all, if entertainment is all about commerce ― giving people what they want ― whereas art is about uncompromising personal expression, then what can be wrong with an artist working with the freedom to do exactly what he wants to do exactly how he wants to do. What’s wrong with a movie that is indeed one-from-the-heart? Well, just take a look at Coppola’s movie of that title. Coppola, with a massively inflated ego, seemed to think his musical would be a masterpiece simply because of his Midas Touch. Never mind the story is half-baked, the actors can’t sing or dance, the sets look gaudy and trashy. As long as it was Coppola conception/production, it had to be a masterpiece, right? (Ridley Scott fell into the same trap after BLADE RUNNER with the horrible LEGEND.)
While Peckinpah always entertained a mad(and maddening) vision of the West, it was an advantage than a problem in movies like MAJOR DUNDEE, THE WILD BUNCH, and BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, which didn’t try to morally justify themselves, let alone preach us a sermon. (Peckinpah, who slyly poked fun at moralist-preachers in his earlier films, played drunken preacher in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, a kind of immoral moralist, which is pointless.) And though there’s a philosophy to STRAW DOGS, too many things are happening for its ideas to turn into a lecture on human nature. The world may indeed be crazy, but you don’t try to make sense of a crazy world with crazy ideas; rather, you show how the crazy world turns people crazy and fills them with crazy ideas which make the crazy world even crazier, and this is the greatness of THE WILD BUNCH. Even when some of the characters try to make some sense of the world and craft a moral code, the edifice crumbles under the sun, wind, and bullets. And the sheer pungency of BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE keeps the movie reeking with the stuff of life, presenting life as a wild game of misfortune, luck, and betrayal, and it’s all over before you have the time to make heads or tails out of it. Peckinpah’s forte was never human thought as a reflective pool but as a raging river, i.e. in his best films, the characters use their heads to stay afloat, not to plumb the depths.
THE WILD BUNCH is more than the sum of its themes. The theme of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, in contrast, hangs over the movie like an inebriated sermon. Though Peckinpah idolizes Billy the Kid as the free spirit(at odds with the moral tyranny of religious fanatics and material tyranny of businessmen), the message seems forced and strained, as if unpersuasive even to the man presenting the case ― except when he’s drunk, which may be why the movie itself feels like perpetual rounds of drinking sessions and hangovers.
Recently, while watching PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, I was reminded of another film, which happened to be BLADE RUNNER. And the reason for the connection was the nature and the circumstances of their leading characters, the static atmosphere, and the ‘leisurely’ pace. The static or stagnant mood of both films feels strange within the context of the worlds they present. Both films are about social change. In PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, the Old West is dying out and making way for the New West of Law & Order that is paving the way for big politics and big business. The future world of BLADE RUNNER is overrun by technology spearheaded by the Tyrell corporation, and nothing seems fixed in this multi-cultural hodge-podge of a world. So, one might expect lots of thrills and excitement. Besides, one is a Western, and the other is a Hollywood sci-fi movie. Yet, what prevails is a feeling of resignation, alienation, even boredom.
The world of BLADE RUNNER is so cluttered with new and strange things that ‘change’ has simply become a part of the air people breathe. Nothing is exciting in a world being constantly transformed ― technologically, demographically, environmentally. Also, for all the futurism and change, there’s the overwhelming stench of rot and decay. While Tyrell corporation towers over L.A. and space colonies are sprouting across the solar system ― or across the galaxy ― , much of Earth seems to be sinking into an abyss. Future L.A. is like the New Rome ― recall that even as the Roman Empire kept expanding and transforming the world, Rome itself was rotting from within. (Of course, many metropolises in the Western world are also falling apart from within even as their stakes in the globalist enterprise grows bigger. As the power and influence of the US and EU penetrate and spread all over the world, non-whites are penetrating into and spreading across in European and American cities. Why is this invasion being allowed to happen? It’s not only because Jews own the US and EU but because of the element of self-interest among shameless white gentiles who aspire to gain or keep power. Though Western elites make all the right noises about ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’, their main reason for acceding to anti-Western ideology has to do with fear and self-interest. Since Jews control the terms of the debate, information, and financing, the only way white gentiles can rise up and enjoy privilege is by being approved by powerful Jews. To win such approval, most aspiring elitists must say all the correct things. If 80% of Jews were conservative and opposed ‘diversity’, most aspiring gentile elitists would do a 180 degrees and be for strong national borders. If most Jews were against ‘gay marriage’, most well-educated whites wouldn’t be supporting it either. So, even though gentile elites seem to be speaking out of compassion and generosity, they really say what they do out of self-interest. And Jews know this. Though Jewish-led policies are destructive to whites as a whole, Jews also know that aspiring white elitists will do anything ― even stab their own race in the back ― to gain wealth, privilege, and status, just like plenty of Chinese rich in Shanghai in the 20s and 30s were willing to piss on their own country in order to party and dance with Western imperialists. If the qualifications for success happen to be politically correct and harmful to whites as a whole, plenty of whites will still embrace them for self-interest. But because of their yammering about ‘diversity’, ‘tolerance’, and ‘equality’, many people are fooled into thinking that white liberal elitists are a bunch of naive do-gooders. Some are but many are actually selfish and vain sharks who will do anything for their own privilege. Does anyone think David Cameron or Mitt Romney will sacrifice their power and privilege for principles? They may pander to patriots and conservatives during elections to win votes from suckers, but all said and done, their ilk will do anything to gain a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. Since Jews own the oven and the ingredients, white goy elites must play the game to sit at the table.) It’s been said that NY is a city that never sleeps. The L.A. of BLADE RUNNER is like a night that never ends, as if the entire city is Nosferatu vampire dreading the break of dawn. Except for perhaps among some of the Asians, there is little sense of community in BLADE RUNNER. Deckard, as a white man, is a loner without a tribe to call his own. Ironically, he develops a certain identification with the very ‘people’ he’s assigned to kill; he even falls in love with one, and when he later suspects that he too might be one of ‘them’, it’s both tragic and bracing. Tragic since he must kill his own kind and he too might be targeted by other ‘blade runners’; yet also liberating and meaningful because he now belongs to a tribe/community/identity, that of the replicants.
It’s like Moses discovering he’s Jewish in TEN COMMANDMENTS. In one sense, it’s a bummer because he’s a member of the slave race; yet, it’s also deeply meaningful because he found his real people. It’s also morally meaningful since the conscience within every man favors the underdog to the over-dog. Charlton Moses as a Hebrew has to work as a slave, but he feels freer(at least morally) as a slave than as a slave-master. Slave-master may wield power, but he’s a soul-slave of greed and wickedness whereas a physical slave, though bonded to a life of sweat and toil, is spiritually guilt-free. Today, blacks and Jews feel liberated by history of righteous victim-hood whereas Wasps and Germans feel chained to historical shame of slavery and the Holocaust.
Furthermore, there’s an element of uplifting irony in that being a Hebrew or a Replicant isn’t simply a matter of being enslaved or oppressed but enslaved/oppressed as a superior being, i.e. a Hebrew(in Egypt) or Replicant(in L.A.) is an artificially enslaved natural aristocrat or even natural slave-master. Jews believed their God was the one and only God, and that they were the Chosen People, therefore superior to rest of mankind and fated to rule over rest mankind. Some Jews even believe that all goyim were created by God to serve as slaves to the naturally-spiritually superior Jews. (And secular Jews believe, consciously or subconsciously, that their higher intelligence, will to power, brilliance, and creativity give them the natural privilege to rule over dimwit goyim who, though perhaps better than Jews in beauty or muscle, should obey Jews as cattle obey ranchers.) Replicants are equal in intelligence to just about the smartest person on Earth ― Tyrell himself ― and about four or five times stronger than the strongest human; Batty even turns out to be smarter than Tyrell.
So, being a Hebrew or Replicant offers a sense of both moral superiority(for being wrongfully enslaved and exploited) and ‘racial’ superiority(since they are or see themselves as greater than the rest of humanity) ― and indeed, this is why Jews, along with Negroes, are so frustrating for whites to deal with. Whites, due to their history of ‘evil racist oppression’, are obligated to feel compassion for poor helpless Jews, but in fact Jews, with their naturally higher intelligence, are now the masters over the white race. And Negroes, though branded as the eternal victims of ‘white racism’, are the stronger race and using their muscle power to beat up/pussify white boys and conquer white women; the white race in both the EU and US is turning into a slave race but must carry on as if they’re forever the sinful slave-master race.
Anyway, the world of BLADE RUNNER, technologically advanced as it is, is also dank and fetid, like a sewer. And for all the First World super-technology, future L.A. is being transformed into the Third World. And yet, the endless array of neon, the flying cars, the pervasive hum and whir, and chaos prevent the world from seeming bleak. Things are always happening. Deckard seems neither to love nor hate this L.A. He’s a part of it but also detached from it. We learn he’d given up blade-running and works as a freelance private detective; indeed, he is coerced into the latest mission, but then he doesn’t protest too much since he knows how the city works, and ‘you can’t fight city hall’. Yet, it’s as though he needs to be part of this L.A. for its ambience suits his personality. Deckard’s passivity/inner-peace(if it could be called that) is paradoxically on the same wavelength as the excessive noise, buzz, and chaos. Some people seek peace by crawling into a silent hole and meditating, like the Indian yogis. But others can only find peace by being ‘exhausted’ by the world around them. The buzz of the outside world muffles the troubled voices and sounds emanating from within. (There is some of this with Travis Bickle too. As noisy and rotten as NY is, Bickle feels most troubled when he’s alone in the silence of his apartment. There he can hear the sound of his own demons. This also goes for the Richard Gere character in THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES. The more he seeks the ‘truth’ in his own private space, the more he falls into confusion and panic, which is why the police-woman played by Laura Linney tells him to come and spend the holidays in the company of people.) Deckard, in his apartment, looks out from the balcony at the busy world below with streaking cars and sirens spiraling through the night.
The world of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is also peculiarly stale despite all the changes afoot in the West. One reason is much of the film takes place among outlaws and drifters of the lower depths. (Characters also tend to be either old or young, with few in between. This age dichotomy, however, doesn’t necessarily connote generational conflict, as Garrett is allied with the younger Poe while Billy gets along fine with a number of old folks. In a way, the rapport between Billy and a number of old folks could owe to the fact that grandchildren and grandparents generally get along better than do parents and children. The problem for Pat is that as an aging but not yet old man, he is forced to play the stern parental role in relation to Billy.) Another reason for the slow pace owes to PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID being an old timer’s tale. The main crisis faced by Garrett isn’t so much about ‘changing times’ or betraying his friends but about the wounded narcissism of a once virile man drying into old age (Like general Jack D. Ripper in DR. STRANGELOVE, Garrett is worried about the loss of his ‘essence’.) Garrett has a difficult time easing himself into old age either as an outlaw or on the side of law because of his vanity and self-esteem. Played by James Coburn, he’s a tall good-looking guy. And he’s very good with the gun, as evinced by his expert shooting of chicken heads. Most men just grow old, never having been anything special in the prime of their lives. With Garrett, however, we get a sense that he must have been quite a lady’s man and a man’s man. Billy’s respect for him suggests that Garrett, as lover and killer(and maybe gambler), may have been a real dude. He belongs to the alpha male club. Yet, Garrett feels his essence slipping away day by day; what used to excite him either no longer does or is beyond his fading energy level. And so, he signs onto the insurance of Law & Order for security in the coming years. And yet, there is still enough virile ‘outlaw’ blood still in him that rebels(though in a muted manner) against what he must do, which is why he prolongs the search for Billy. As a lawman, he has to go after his old ‘friends’, killing them one by one. And yet, he insists on doing it his way, as if the eccentricity of his approach is evidence of his freedom and masterfulness; ironically, he seeks to relive the vitality of his younger yrs by killing the very people associated to his past as a free-spirited outlaw. The dynamic is somewhat similar to the one in THE LAST DETAIL where Buddusky(Jack Nicholson) is assigned to take Meadows(Randy Quaid) to a military prison; Buddusky has no choice but to comply and follow orders ― which is exactly what he delivers in the end ― , but he creates an illusion of freedom and independence by turning the detail into a wild journey; if anything, by showing the young Meadows the thrills of life, Buddusky inadvertently makes the situation more difficult for both of them.
Pat Garrett must do what he doesn’t want to do. As sheriff, he’s no longer free to do as he pleases and must take orders and serve the Law(and the powerful forces behind the Law). So, the only way to keep things personal is to do it his way. Since he no longer has personal freedom, he tries to stamp his subservience with his personality; he must auteur-ize it, just like Hollywood directors assigned to projects they didn’t care for relied on their personal style to maintain the illusion individuality and independence. (Though we associate maverick-ness and eccentricity with freedom and independence, they could actually be therapeutic opiates to conceal the extent of one’s bondage. They create the illusion of freedom. In the past, there were lots of blacks who acted jive-ass and wild on screen, creating the impression that blacks in America were free to do as they like. The young Cassius Clay, upon winning the gold medal at the Olympics, thought he was living in the freest country in the world because he, as a loud Negro boxer, could put on a wild coon act in public. And there are wild comedians in America today. Whites must obey the rules of political correctness, but by cracking some impolite jokes in the comedy circuit, they think they have real freedom. Thus, even political incorrectness can be used by the powers-that-be to as a control mechanism, and indeed Howard Stern and Jerry Springer have played this role with the white working class masses who, though powerless, feel outrageously and boldly free when listening or watching trashy programs. Based on these characters, one would think they are free people in a free society. To some extent yes, but in another way, their superficial eccentricities only fool them and us that there is real freedom for all of us. Why does the Chinese communist party allow tabloid news and other such nonsense on Chinese TV? Such ‘wild’ distractions make the masses of Chinese feel they’re living in a free nation when, in fact, they’re only addicted to the opiate of false freedom made visible by silly ‘maverick’ antics and expressions.) Peckinpah once described his role in Hollywood as a ‘whore’, and a scene with a prostitute in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID illustrates the personalization of bondage in the absence of real freedom: Pat Garrett asks a prostitute information about Billy, and the prostitute knows she’ll have to tell him one way or another ― since Garrett has the law on his side and will use any means to pry it out of her ― , but instead of just telling him, she allows herself to be slapped around by Garrett before giving the answer. She knows she’s a slave, but by doing it in her ‘own way’, she maintains a bit of self-dignity and illusion of independence. She didn’t merely obey but obeyed in her own peculiar manner. (Perhaps, all the ‘alternative cultures’ are psycho-socially therapeutic in a similar way. Young people know they must go to school and then find jobs and settle down. Most of them know they’ll never have much power, wealth, or real freedom; they’ll be just one of the crowd. Then, the only way for most of them to feel special, free, or independent is by taking on some ‘alternative’ identity. This seems to be especially true in Japan, a far more ‘conformist’ and less free society than the United States. By dressing funny and acting weird on Sundays ― though most of them merely imitate popular comic book characters or J-pop celebrities ― , they create the semblance of being special individuals.)
As a kind of psychological western, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID grapples with the theme of change in its various manifestations. Pat Garrett accepts social change because he’s weary of personal change, i.e. growing too old to constantly shift gears and adapt on a day-to-day basis. Ironically, he embraces social change in order to settle into constancy in his personal life, something we can understand since the main reason for our enthusiasm for technological change is to make our lives easier and less eventful. Also, many older Americans may just conform to the politically correct order with its ‘changing values’ since PC rules everything and not going along may rob you of your rights, prestige, and well-being. If you’re an aging cop or journalist near retirement, why risk everything ― respect, pension, honors, etc. ― by rocking the boat? Why end up like John Derbyshire, James Kilpatrick, James Watson, or Joseph Sobran? Why speak out against ‘gay marriage’ and black thuggery and be axed and hounded out of one’s profession? Thus, embracing the social change of PC is as often done out of cowardice(and want of stability in one’s personal career and life, as a whole new generation of women has been raised to reject men who don’t go along with the gay agenda) as out of conviction. Most people bend to whichever way the wind blows. Paradoxically, the growing conservatism of older people may make them even more sheepish before PC. Conservatism isn’t only ideological but a state of mind centered around conformity, obedience, consensus, and fear. Since the conservative mind wants to belong, to be approved, to be accepted, and to be secured to a bedrock of stability, it is more likely to bend to whatever the prevailing wind may be. A conservative may not ideologically agree with PC, but he’s psychologically and emotionally helpless before its power since his mental habit is to fit into society than rebel against it. If Christianity is the prevailing value system, the conservative mind bends to its will; but the same is true when the prevailing value system is communism or PC, which is why communism became the new ‘conservative’ ideology of the Soviet Union.
For someone who embraces social change, Pat Garrett spends most of his time ― at least in the movie ― away from the centers of change. He’d rather go from place to place that reminds and links him to the world he used to know and feels closest to. And yet, he’s acting as the agent of change exterminating the very people who most embody the old ways. The love/hate that Pat feels for Billy & his friends is somewhat akin to the emotional dynamic of the Russian film BURNT BY THE SUN, where a sinister agent both admires and hates the general he’s secretly targeting for destruction(and not least because the general ‘stole’ the woman he loves; he also feels both love and hate toward the woman herself for she is forever the object of his desire yet also the person who ‘betrayed’ him. If the targeting in Peckinpah’s film is older-man-against-younger-man, the reverse happens in BURNT BY THE SUN). There’s an element of sexual envy in both movies. There is no specific woman involved in the conflict between Pat and Billy ― as there is in BURNT BY THE SUN ― , but Garrett, as an aging narcissist, frets he’s not the man he used to be, whereas Billy is king of the sack in spades. Billy is at an age when everything comes easily and naturally whereas Garrett must make an extra effort no matter what he’s doing. Billy drinks to feel good; Garrett drinks to drown out the feeling-bad. But the difference between them isn’t merely the matter of age but the courage of one’s convictions. At one time, Garrett may have been like Billy, riding wild and free(both horses and women), but there’s an inkling that he was always a cunning character angling for long-term advantages; even while enjoying the moment, he was worrying about tomorrow. Garrett has the body of a grasshopper but the mind of an ant(or maybe that of a flea or mosquito since an ant diligently works for a living whereas Pat wraps himself with the ‘Law’ to live off others). Billy the Kid, in contrast, is grasshopper all the way. He lives by the Rock Star code of ‘hope I die before I get too old’. He lives for today and doesn’t know the meaning of tomorrow. He’s wild and free, going where his spirit takes him. For example, while rustling cattle from big rancher Chisum, Billy spots some wild turkeys and goes chasing after them. Billy lives, eats, fuc*s, drinks, and finally dies as he likes and all for the moment. He has no use for psychology since he has instinct. And he doesn’t play to win since his way of playing is in itself a way of winning ― to be free and ‘true’ to oneself; even as a shackled prisoner at the Lincoln jail, he looks and acts more like the winner than his captors. Even luck seems to be on his side until it finally runs out, but then even his dying is more ‘winning’ than Garrett’s living on, and so Billy wins even in his death. Billy has no need for the law since his law is the very instinct for survival, which is almost never wrong. In a gun duel with Kermit(Jack Elam, not the frog), both men are supposed to walk ten paces but Billy turns around right away and pulls out his gun.. Billy cheats but his instinct proved to be correct as Kermit turns around at the count of 7 and not 10. Billy is an outlaw and a killer but imbued with a ‘natural morality’ as to whom to kill, whom not to kill, how to kill, how not to kill, whom to rob, whom not to rob, whom to trust, whom not to trust, whom to sympathize with, whom not to sympathize with. And he’s willing to pay the price for his way of life ― not as a willing martyr but as a natural hero who knows that luck has a way of running out.
This is the ‘courage’ that Garrett doesn’t have. Garrett as a young man may have loved life as much as Billy does, but he also fears death and disease. He wants to live to ‘a ripe old age’and buckles under the pressure of aging. It’s like the mountain man character of DERSU UZALA, who, though a man of nature, panics when his eyesight weakens and begs the Russian explorer to take him to civilization so he can live out his final years in safety. Dersu eventually feels out-of-place in civilization and returns to nature where he is killed ― ironically not by natural forces, especially the tiger that Dersu both reveres and fears, but by other men greedy for the rifle gifted to him by his Russian explorer friend.
Part of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID’s strangeness derives from a kind of generational inversion. Garrett is the older man, yet he embraces the great changes that will transform the Old West. Billy and his friends are younger, yet they are for the West staying the way it is.
Yet, Billy wants things to stay the way they are not because he’s conservative but because he’s anarchic. Paradoxically, Garrett accepts change because it promises more order while Billy stays true to the status quo because it’s full of surprises. Garrett is a ‘reactionary liberal’ and Billy is a ‘conservative maverick’. I suppose some wild Negroes might prefer to keep Detroit the way it is because the sheer chaos means they, as crazy jigger-jivers, can do whatever they please.
This confuses the meaning of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, complicated further by the concept of ‘libertarianism’, which is sometimes associated with conservatism, sometimes with liberalism.
Given the flexibility of meanings, conservatism isn’t only about ‘maintaining the status quo’ but creating a status quo of order, either based on the rule of written law or iron boot. Conservatism can be for change if the change leads to greater social order(but then, any change, designated as ‘reform’, can also be construed as ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’. What are we to make of Teddy Roosevelt, the liberal conservative?) If conservatism can be for social change, then radicalism, such as communism, can be for social order, but it’s not conservative because, contra conservatives who prefer a social order rooted in ‘time-tested values’ of historical experience, radicals believe in a new order premised on bold new theories of intellectual hubris.
One of the major problems with PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is it pretends to have a message that turns out to be not only murky but morally indefensible when half-way discernible on occasion. Worse, it’s hardly examined but conveyed with great conviction, like the words of a wino that make little sense but are spoken with brazen confidence.
I even detect a degree of cowardice on Peckinpah’s part, an attempt to have it both ways: playing both the traditionalist and youth card. The problem with this owed to the fact that Peckinpah’s films have always been more about men than boys. RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY has two aging gunmen taking on younger men. The older men are full of experience and hard-earned wisdom whereas young guys are rash and egotistical. MAJOR DUNDEE is about two men in the prime of their lives bound by friendship, torn by war and mutual betrayal(personal and political), chained together by circumstances, and sworn to kill one other. Though generally considered a failure, I rate it as one of Peckinpah’s best. Like THE WILD BUNCH ― indeed even more so ― it’s notable for its lack of moral clarity and its sense of irony upon irony upon irony. One could fault Peckinpah for not thinking MAJOR DUNDEE all the way through, but at least he was thinking about it and conveying those thoughts through action and drama. Another advantage of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and THE WILD BUNCH was that they were made for people much like Peckinpah himself ― full-grown men who loved the West, as history and mythology. By the time Peckinpah made THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS, he became a much lauded ‘auteur’. He even became ‘cool’ among the youngish Counterculture crowd, some of whom saw THE WILD BUNCH as a revolutionary tract like BONNIE AND CLYDE. Though there was a great cultural divide between Peckinpah, who was of the ‘greatest generation’, and the boomer generation, he was appreciative of the praise and flattery from the so-called Film Generation and Rock generation(though Peckinpah claimed to not know Dylan prior to the making of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID). Though the Western came under attack by liberals as ‘racist’ and ‘imperialist’, it also saw a revival among the Counterculture folks as mythology of a time when Americans lived without borders as free individuals. There’s a scene in EASY RIDER when the two bikers stop by a ranch where some white guy is married to a Mexican woman. The rancher’s shoeing of his horse is visually matched with the biker’s repairing of his wheel, as if to say the Counterculture hero is the neo-cowboy. And though Hell’s Angels were politically far from liberal, they were embraced by some Counterculture people as modern frontiersmen living as nomads on the road. The Counterculture was a strange phenomenon. Consider the notion of the “Gathering of the Tribes.” Though universalist in its ideology and ‘spirituality’, Counterculture folks were also for neo-tribalism, as if modern society was too big and packed too many people into nameless and faceless communities. To restore the balance, mankind had to group off into tribes along shared interests, values, and commitments. And some of this ideal lived on in works such as IT TAKES A VILLAGE by Hillary Clinton though, to be sure, the main influences on her were radical intellectualism than Counterculturalism. She was never a hip and groovy person.
Anyway, one thing Peckinpah would have noticed in the early 70s was that many of his biggest fans were actually young people, the so-called Film Generation(as designated by Stanley Kauffmann). Though two decades older than the oldest boomer, Peckinpah developed a certain rapport with young people. While some older people, especially critics like Kauffmann/Kael/Gilliatt, appreciated Peckinpah, many others were turned off by his violence. Many of Peckinpah’s own generation preferred John Wayne westerns and had a hard time adjusting to the New Violence of which Peckinpah was a master. Though an older man, Peckinpah was creating a new sensibility that appealed more to younger audiences ― same was true of Sergio Leone’s westerns. Kurosawa had done much the same earlier with YOJIMBO, his biggest hit in Japan, but he recoiled from the nihilism he unleashed and made more ‘morally responsible’ films like HIGH AND LOW and RED BEARD.
Anyway, though working toward something new with THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS, Peckinpah wasn’t consciously pandering to young people, but this changed by the time he made PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. In a way, Peckinpah’s conundrum in the making of this movie was not unlike Garrett’s in the movie, i.e. there’s an inescapable sense of divided loyalties and convoluted convictions. Though Peckinpah was loathe to admit it, I think he was subconsciously repulsed for selling himself out to youth sensibility. The myth surrounding the making of the film would have Peckinpah, the film artist, struggling against the craven greed of the studio system(as especially embodied in the figure of James Aubrey, whose nickname was ‘Cobra’). So, Billy and his gang in the movie are supposed to represent truth, freedom, and purity while Law & Order(like the Hollywood studio)is supposed to represent compromise, conformism, and corruption. Garrett, as Peckinpah’s alter ego, is supposed to represent the man in the middle, someone who wants to ride wild and free with Billy and his gang but has sold himself out to the ‘Sante Fe ring’. So, Pat Garrett and Sam Peckinpah are both supposed to be tragic figures: men who know what is true and what is false but sold out for a horse to ride off in. It’s self-pity elevated to tragic self-aggrandizement. I don’t doubt the sincerity on Peckinpah’s part, but the conscious mind is always only the half the equation of a man’s soul. Whatever the message of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID may be, I can’t help feeling that Peckinpah really didn’t care for nor understood the boomer generation(embodied by Billy and his gang, most of whom mope around like left-over extras from EASY RIDER). Indeed, Garrett seems most alive when he visits Chisum and the governor(played by Jason Robards), both men of Garrett’s age or little older. Peckinpah came of age at a time when boys wanted to grow into men and be thought of as such. Peckinpah was not Mr. Sensitive or even Mr. Cool. He was raised to be Mr. Hard. Most of Peckinpah’s memorable characters are full-grown men ― like in MAJOR DUNDEE ― or aged men, like in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and THE WILD BUNCH. Peckinpah had great rapport with the actors playing such characters. Peckinpah did a fine job of directing younger actors in STRAW DOGS, but there’s a chilly emotional distance in that film that’s absent in the earlier ones, as if Peckinpah could empathize but not sympathize with any of the characters. In MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH, it’s as if Peckinpah was one of the fellas riding along and sharing the glories and travails along the way. In STRAW DOGS, he coldly observed as if looking at some strange culture through a microscope.
Despite or precisely because of the idealization of youth in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Peckinpah doesn’t feel very close to many of its characters. Though Billy is supposed to be the hero, he remains a blank screen/slate on which to project our romantic notions of freedom. But what is he on his own terms? It’s not very clear.
The characterizations in MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH work much better because they are not of symbols or ideals but just men, very hard men. They’re tough, ruthless, cunning, and devious but, above all, they register as ‘human’. Remarkably, Peckinpah squeezed sentimentality out of unsentimental-ity, like squeezing tears out of stones. The worlds of MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH are harsh and cruel; one false move could mean death; ‘friends’ can turn enemy at any moment and vice versa. Riding out of a town after a gun battle, a wounded bandit pleads for mercy to Pike Bishop(William Holden), but Bishop coldly looks down at the blinded man. Then, the man, accepting his fate, says, “I can’t ride.. Finish it Mr. Bishop” whereupon Bishop casually pulls out his pistol and shoots him. There’s no special mercy in a world of killers. And yet, man cannot live on blood alone, and so things become entangled and complicated to the point where the men feel compelled to act in the name of ‘honor’, a substitute morality for hard men. Since they are killers facing another bunch of killers, the only honorable solution is by killing. Men cannot live on blood alone, but the honor they embrace leads only to more blood. It’s utterly crazy, but Peckinpah makes it work and pay off. Similarly, MAJOR DUNDEE lurches from one brutal insanity to another as we follow the battle-hardened and ever-dwindling cavalry of men, but as the story reaches its climax, we can’t help feeling for the tough and resilient guys. We soften to their hardness.
Things feel different in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID because of the entitlement-ality among Billy and his youthful gang. They just sit around and do nothing but feel better than the rest of the world because they represent ‘youth’, ‘purity’, ‘truth’, and ‘freedom’. Yet, we sense that Peckinpah, subconsciously at least, couldn’t really have believed in any of this because Billy and his gang come across as a bunch of grubby stoned-out losers as opposed to the kind of hard men that Peckinpah admired in his other films. Indeed, members of Billy’s gang are less like young-men-as-they-really-might-have-been-in-the-old-days than like counterculture-hippies-suited-up-in-cowboy-outfits-and-dropped-via-time-machine-in-the-19th-century. Most of the time, they sit or stand around as if they’re waiting for the next delivery of pot ― or pizza to satiate the munchies. And for all their embodiment of ‘youth’ and ‘freedom’, they are about the most enervated bunch of ne’er-do-wells ever to (dis)grace the big screen. If anything, the livelier and more memorable characters in the movie are older folks. Even the old Pete Maxwell, who lends his bedroom to Billy and his girl, has more of a personality than most of the young hoods. And Chill Wills as a fat-bellied saloon owner has more personality and colorful language than all them young dudes combined. Billy’s crew registers as little more than hangers-on, not much different from real-life hangers-on and leeches around famous filmmakers(especially Fellini who loved the adulation). In a way, it’s as though Peckinpah made of young people something they were not, just like young counterculture film buffs made of Peckinpah what he was not. Peckinpah was a maverick, but his sensibility wasn’t compatible with the Counterculture, and though Peckinpah made PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID in the Countercultural spirit, he didn’t feel genuine rapport with the generation that produced hippies, Film Generation, and the like. Counterculture, in its commitment to ‘authenticity’, found something real in Peckinpah’s hard vison of the West ― an authenticity that was rare in earlier Westerns whitewashed of violence and darker themes. But, the Boomer generation was also into ‘peace’, ‘love’, and ‘understanding’ ― what’s called ‘grace’ in Malick’s TREE OF LIFE ― , and there was simply too much in Peckinpah’s movies that were at odds with the Zeitgeist, though given Peckinpah’s warmth toward salt-of-the-earth Mexicans, he could never be accused of the cardinal sin of ‘racism’, which is why I suppose he was acceptable to many liberals(though I must say, the notion of killing a hundred Mexicans to save one Mexican, who is btw already dead, always struck me as morally suspect in THE WILD BUNCH).
It was as if Peckinpah was trying to be hip with the Counterculture generation, but the fact is Peckinpah was not a hip guy. He was a hard guy who grew up under hard men, a hard guy given to hard drinking, and a hard guy taking and giving the hard blows of life. Unlike the Boomer kids who rebelled against some of their hard/tough fathers, Peckinpah absorbed the hard lessons from his grandfather and father. If he did harbor repressed pent-up anger against his father, it wasn’t aimed at the old man but at the world through the medium of movies. The boomer generation reacted differently to their ‘hard fathers’, many of whom were of Peckinpah’s generation. Boomer rejected the hardness and made a collective/personal pledge to understand their own children. Boomer attitude toward their kids can be heard on Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Younger Generation” and Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s “Teach Your Children Well”.
In one sense, Peckinpah grew into a Real Man and didn’t go for the namby-pamby stuff the Boomers came to be known for. Instead of bitching and whining about his old man and going boo-hoo over his childhood, he accepted the world of tough men and he became one himself. On the other hand, he went through life as a wounded soul whose personal issues ― perhaps rooted in earlier family life ― were never resolved and thereby hurled at the whole world. He wasn’t a good husband nor father, was often bullying toward women, and given to acting like a boorish egotistical tyrant on and off the movie set. Despite his tough exterior, there was a bruised child within him given to tantrums(for maternal affection?). He could also be overly sentimental by nature, and at times, unsure of handling the conflict between his tough manly side and soft childlike side. He recounted a hunt where he’d shot a deer, tracked it til it collapsed, and then broke down in tears. There were two sides to Peckinpah ― perhaps genetically rooted though deeply shaped by his personal biography ― , with one side being hard/bullying/tyrannical and the other side being sensitive/soft/loving. Many, perhaps most, people are more one way than the other, and they are well-adjusted as either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. Likewise, some people tend to be ‘extroverted’ and some people tend to be ‘introverted’. There are, of course, many people who are both soft and hard, but they tend to be half-soft and half-hard, thus allowing a degree of emotional balance. Peckinpah, in contrast, was full-hard and full-soft, and this tension fueled his daemonic creativity. He shed lots of blood and lots of tears. The deer could also be dear. Indeed, what makes THE WILD BUNCH so memorable is the wild extremes of hardness and softness. Pike Bishop and Dutch Angstrom(Ernest Borgnine) are often utterly ruthless and heartless ― at one point, Bishop even says, “10,000 in gold cuts an awful lot of family ties”, and in the final gunfight, Dutch uses a woman as a shield ― , yet they can’t shake from their conscience the heartrending sight of Angel tormented by Mapache.
Bishop and Deke Thorton(Robert Ryan) are former friends forced by circumstances to take aim at one another, and both are ruthlessly resolved to doing-what-they-must-do-to-survive, but Bishop would rather run than face Thorton, and Thorton dreads the moment when he might have to kill Bishop or vice versa. This dynamic of friends-forced-to-be-enemies is a recurrent theme in such Peckinpah films as RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, MAJOR DUNDEE, THE WILD BUNCH, PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, KILLER ELITE, and OSTERMAN WEEKEND. It’s also there in BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE insofar as the Strother Martin character, who turns out to be not such a bad fellow, goes along with Taggart(L.Q. Jones) in the betrayal of their friend Hogue. There’s an aspect of it in THE GETAWAY in that the Ali MacGraw character cut a deal to kill her husband, which she almost does. And in STRAW DOGS, the Hoffman character, in the final battle, not only has to fight it out with thugs outside and deal with his hostile uncooperative wife inside. Though all of these scripts originated from someone else, Peckinpah was drawn to themes of betrayal of friendship, circumstances forcing men to be hard and ruthless but also haunted by doubt, remorse, and guilt.
Judging by Peckinpahs’ manic-depressive private life ― and his often half-crazy professional life ― , maybe there was something wrong with how the pre-boomer generation dealt with the problems of authority. To be sure, many children who grew up under ‘tough parenting’ ended up just fine and didn’t become the hard-drinking fighter/bully/boor that Peckinpah often was; but then, much of one’s future is shaped by genes, with some kids from bad families turning out fine with some kids brought up in nice families turning out crazy. Every roll in the hay is a roll of the genetic dice, and you never know what set of genes the kid’s gonna end up with. Each of the Buchanan boys was unique in his own way(according to the Pat Buchanan’s biography RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING) and Amy Chua’s two daughters turned out to be very different. Based on the biographies of Peckinpah that I read, I never got the sense that his father was particularly abusive(though he could be stern and ‘tough’). If anything, he seemed to have been an upstanding member of the community respected by many people. And Peckinpah even paid homage to the old man as one of the models for the righteous hero of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY ― the line “All I want is to enter my house justified”, surely one of the most moving in Westerns, was something Peckinpah’s father used to say. So, the problem wasn’t so much Peckinpah’s father but the nature of the father-son relationship due to certain incompatible personality issues. Peckinpah’s father was about respectability, responsibility, dignity, and honor. He was a man of the Good Book and the Law Book. In the PLANET OF THE APES universe, he would have been an orangutan. Peckinpah was naturally like the Charlton Heston character. He was a wild man born to a family of respectable apes. Just as Bob Dylan rebelled due to his adventurous/irreverent nature(even though his father was very decent and supportive), Peckinpah was one of those people who could never sit still. (It’s still interesting that neither Dylan or Peckinpah rebelled directly against his father. Instead, he chose to do his own thing and paid no heed to what his father expected or hoped of him. He took his rebellious energy and directed at the world at large.) Peckinpah may have been to his father what George Bailey was to his in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. George had to ‘lick the world’, and Peckinpah had to lick something, anything. Due to the nature of his personality, Peckinpah might have felt some degree of shame in relation to his father. His father served his community as a well-respected judge, but Peckinpah studied Theater and wanted to be an ‘artist’. Part of Peckinpah was very much in awe of where he came from and of the people/community where he grew up, but another part of him wanted to be like Brando in THE WILD ONE, the rebel nomad without rules doing as he pleases. (He even got fired one time from a TV studio for showing up to work wearing jeans in imitation of Brando.) Because of Peckinpah’s great respect for the people and the world from which he came, he never rebelled against them directly on a personal level and indeed nostalgically/creatively turned to them time and again for inspiration through the mythology of Westerns. But because of his willful and aggressive nature ― the ‘bad boy’ in him that mischievously loved to stuff frogs into girl’s dresses ― , he didn’t want to indefinitely work in the vein of the traditional western but thrash out something bold and new, even outrageous. He was an natural outlaw born to a natural lawman. RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY was his tribute to the honorable Man of Law, and THE WILD BUNCH was his tribute to the Maverick Outlaw, with MAJOR DUNDEE being somewhere between the law and outlawry, i.e. though Dundee(Charlton Heston) is a cavalry officer with the law on his back, he’s also an officer stationed in some cruddy outpost for having run afoul of the law; ironically, to reclaim his good name with the Law, he goes on a mission where he constantly upends the law, making up his own laws as he goes along.
In the end, his natural genetic makeup gravitated Peckinpah to the side of the outlaw, not because he thought robbing-and-murdering people is good but because the outlaw, being ‘freer’ than the lawman and leading a more existential life, is useful as an icon of the rebellious/creative spirit. The lawman’s actions must follow the law, regardless of whether the law is just or unjust, whereas the outlaw does his own thing, good or bad. Peckinpah’s most infamous film, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, was made in the spirit of the outlaw; not surprisingly Peckinpah said of the film, “Good or bad, like it or not, that is my film.” As Billy says in a scene in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, “law’s a funny thing ain’t it?” The Law had been with Billy and against Garrett when Billy used to work for Chisum, but now it’s with Garrett and against Billy since Garrett is now Chisum’s man. From this angle, the dichotomy in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID may be less about the Law vs Outlaw than about the Order vs the Individual. To be part of the Order means to take orders from the Order, the powers-that-be. Thus, there is no need for one to think for oneself, no need to question on the personal level what is right and wrong, no need to take responsibility for one’s actions. If the Order tells you to go arrest or kill someone, you do it, and that’s that. You could be doing something that’s good or something that’s bad, but you’re not being paid to think. Whether one was an American G.I., Soviet soldier, or Nazi soldier, they were all following orders. If an American commander told a American G.I. to blow up a village, he did so ― as a Nazi or Soviet soldier would have done the same. So, to be part of the Law can paradoxically be immoral or at least amoral. Since the Law orders you to do things and then legally protects you, you never need to ask moral questions. But it’s different if you’re outside the law. As a Dylan song ― “Absolutely Sweet Marie” ― once said, “to live outside the law, you must be honest.” ‘Honest’ here means you must be honest with yourself. If as a free individual, you choose to rob, then you must take responsibility for the robbery. You did it because you chose to do it. In contrast, IRS ‘steals’ tons of money from the tax payers, but taxation ― ‘thievery’ by the government ― is done under the Law, and so nobody takes any responsibility.
There’s more to being ‘outside the Law’. You can freely choose to rob people, but you can also freely choose to defend people. Thus, one can argue that the truly moral man is the conscientious ‘outlaw’ or, more accurately, the ‘outside-law’. Take the men in SEVEN SAMURAI. Each of them freely choose to defend a farm village. It’s an individual choice made outside the law. Thus, the samurai in the film are ‘outside-laws’. And in this sense, the old hero of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY could also be considered an ‘outside-law’. He was a sheriff once but no more. He makes his living by offering his services as a free-lancer with a gun. His latest gig is quite simple ― transport gold from a mining village to the small bank ― , but along the way, he gets involved with a young woman’s predicament of having rushed into marriage with a rogue(whose brothers are even cootier than him). The old hero isn’t bound by any law/contract to defend the girl, but he chooses to do so out of individual free will and sense of personal honor. So, it’s not the Law but individual conscience that drives him to his heroic deed.
Also, he could have easily rode off with the gold in that wild part of the world, but he chooses to honor the contract out of a sense of personal pride. I think it was this quality that Peckinpah most admired in a man. Good or bad, the Real Man is one who thinks things through on his own, makes his own decisions, and either pays or reaps the price for what he does. Thus, an outlaw who does bad and an outside-law who does good have one thing in common. They thought, decided, and acted as free individuals. They did not follow orders from the Order; they didn’t let the Order decide for them what is good and what is bad.
If one follows orders like a dog, then one is not free, and if one is not free, one cannot be said to be really moral. Germans who saved Jews during WWII were outside-laws. They did it out of individual conscience. But then, one could also say people who killed Jews out of their own volition ― and out of genuine hatred ― were, in some ways, more moral than those who just ‘followed orders’. If one honestly hates Jews and decides to kill them ― and takes responsibility for killing them ― , then there’s some degree of integrity to one’s deed. But if you don’t hate Jews but killed them because the Law made you do it, then you were just a dog playing fetch. In a way, this is why Germans who say “we were just following orders” are more despicable than Germans who say “we did it because we really hated Jews.” At least the honest Jew-haters had the courage of their own convictions whereas those who say they just followed orders never thought about what they were doing or why they were doing it.
Anyway, we must be careful not to romanticize the outlaw. Whatever metaphorical value he may have in art, most outlaws/criminals are scum of the Earth without any integrity whatsoever. Why is it that in prison, 99% of inmates say they are innocent and didn’t commit the crime? These scum don’t even have the guts to admit what they did and why.
Though the Generation Gap is usually understood in terms of Boomers and their parents, a more decisive gap could have had formed between the ‘greatest generation’ and their own parents; this gap, while less dramatic and sensational, may actually have been deeper. It’s like the difference between dog fart and cat fart. Dog fart is louder but less deadly whereas a cat fart, though usually silent, is pretty lethal. The GG may have been the first to truly break away from tradition in a profound way, but this phenomenon may have gone undetected(or less detected) because it was more psychological than cultural; also, the boomers wanted to hog all the rebellion/revolution cult for themselves. The GG, unlike the boomers, didn’t make a big spectacle of their difference from their parents, and so the assumption has been that the real profound changes took hold with the boomers in the 60s and early 70s.
Prior to the GG, generation after generation took after(and even looked after) their forebears.
Sure, there was the rise of big cities, huge social transformations, the Jazz Age, and all that. But men and women grew into parents and workers, and their kids, in turn, grew into parents and workers. Though the GG mostly became parents and workers ― especially considering the big boom they produced in industry/economy and childbirths ― , they had psychologically moved away from their own parents in a very profound way; indeed, the life of Sam Peckinpah illustrates this almost perfectly. Peckinpah’s grandfather was a judge, and his father was also judge. Peckinpah’s father followed in the footsteps of Peckinpah’s grandfather. Even if Peckinpah’s father had not become a judge, he would have carried on much of the psycho-cultural tradition/baggage of his own father, Peckinpah’s grandfather. Though individualism has always been a part of American history and culture, it formed and developed within a communal value system and heritage, and this can be seen in the movies of John Ford. In THE SEARCHERS, Ethan(John Wayne)sticks out because he’s a maverick; he is as much at odds with the white community as with the Indians. For the pre-GG generations, to be an individual meant to stand on one’s own feet and join the community as a decent member. It meant you didn’t have to bow down to a King, noble, or special privilege, but it didn’t mean you could do whatever you wanted. Individualism, in this traditional senses, meant you counted as an equal among other equals in a community if you abided by its rules and lived up to its expectations. Though equality isn’t synonymous with sameness, their meanings are related since same – or ‘samer’ ― things tend to be more equal, i.e. identical twins are likely to be more equal to one another than fraternal twins. So, individualism in the traditional sense was less proactive than defensive. It was about becoming a member of the community passed down through generations and, as a proud member, defending the values and interests of that community.
In the Old World, the King and noblemen were superior to most people; they belonged to the High club while most people belonged to the Low community. In America, all free men ― at least white ones ― could be equal as individuals. Since this individualism was anti-King and anti-noblemen ― anti-hierarchy ― , it stressed a certain conformity and community. Since free individuals had come together to fight the privileged power of the English King in the American Revolution, unity was a big component of American individualism. And though many Americans, as free individuals, sought to make their fortune and become rich, the ideology of political equality in America reminded them that they mustn’t be overly ostentatious with their privilege and liberties ― or at least not too much. (Also, if European elites felt confidence in their high status and felt free to think and do their own thing APART from the concerns of the unwashed masses, American elites felt obligated to represent the values of the people in the name of democratic ideals. Since the people had more power in America ― thus more potential to cause trouble if they got out of hand ― , American elites had been more mindful to serve as moral exemplars to the masses. So, democratic American intellectual thought in the 19th century and early 20th century ironically tended to be more conformist and conservative than European culture & thought that was producing men like Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Wagner, etc. Also, American inferiority complex as a cultural backwater tended to make American elites less confident in itself.) This is partly why the late 19th century got such bad rap with the whole ‘robber baron’ label. The problem wasn’t so much that the New Rich made so much money as the fact that they shamelessly flaunted it, giving rise to the ‘Gilded Age’. Rich Americans were putting on airs of European aristocrats and acting like neo-dynasties. Their form of individualism wasn’t about unity and community of all Americans but, “we Great Individuals got ours and you unwashed masses don’t, and we’re gonna spend our money to show the whole world what we are made of and capable of.” But eventually, the super-rich must have come to their senses because men like Carnegie and Rockefeller eventually turned to doing good works for society, leaving a legacy that exists to this day(even if the whole process has become bloated and corrupted to serve the interests and agendas of decadent degenerates).
It’s also true that prior to the GG, the great majority of Americans didn’t have access to higher education. Most of them began work at a relatively young age to help out the family. Most men and women married young and stayed married, and Church was the center of their lives. Thus, the concept of individualism for the pre-GG generation remained within the American tradition. But things began to change with the GG. GG grew up protected by child-labor laws, and so most of them went to school and finished schooll, which means they had more time to think and dream about stuff. And due to the Great Depression, jobs were so scarce/precious that adults took most that could be found, which meant fewer kids could find work, which meant they spent more time at school and had more time for dreams/thought. Though a good number of kids during the Depression quit school and found odd jobs to help out with the family, most of them stuck to schooling. Also, rise of urbanism meant kids had little to do(relative to kids raised on the farm who had to do chores from daybreak), and could spend more time at play, the library, or movie theaters. When most Americans lived on the farm, there was always stuff for kids to do. And even during economic down times, farm women tended to have lots of kids, and people eked out a living off the land. But for urban folks, bad times meant having fewer kids, and those kids(who grew up in smaller families) had less chores to do, and so they had more time to themselves. Kids born into the GG generation had fewer siblings with the onset of the Great Depression, a period of baby bust. Since they grew up in smaller families, they were bound to be more individualistic, just like one-child policy in China led to the rise of a generation of ‘prince-lings.’ Also, the epic nature of WWII uprooted many Americans from their communities for the first time and sent them all over the world. War is hell, of course, but it was also a great exciting time for Americans, a kind of adventure/travel for many young American males who’d never been far away from their places of birth. And because Americans entered the actual fighting relatively late in the war ― at least on a huge scale, e.g. Normandy happened only in 1944 ― , American soldiers experienced the less hellish side of war than did the Russians, Germans, Brits, Japanese, Chinese, and etc. And American women of GG entered factories in huge numbers during the war, gaining a taste of their own ‘independence’, even if it wasn’t long-lasting. And then, there was economic boom following the war, and G.I. bill allowed many men to go to college. Thus, the nature of individualism profoundly changed for the GG, even though, having grown up under their more traditional parents, most members of GG socially imitated their parents in terms of getting married, settling down, and raising families. We like to think of the GG as self-sacrificing(and I suppose they were in contrast to the Boomers), but GG was, in a way, the first Me-generation, even if this was more psychological than social, but then psychological shifts pave the way for social shifts. Sam Peckinpah was typical in this regard. Like his father, he got married and had kids. But psychologically, he remained restless and wanted something more from life than ‘being just like my old man’. It could also be seen in Marlon Brando. And Norman Mailer, Arthur Penn, and Robert Altman, all members of the GG. They were different from the earlier generation of directors such as Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks, Capra, DeMille, and etc who mastered a certain formula or genre and stuck with it. Even if the GG, more or less, socially aped their parents, psychologically they were going off on their own tangents. So, in this sense, what the Boomer generation accomplished was, in effect, the social fulfilment of the psychological changes wrought by the GG.
On another level, perhaps the Boomer rebellion against their GG parents wasn’t just about rejecting GG conformism but resenting GG individualist aloofness. Again, this is evident in the case of Sam Peckinpah. While it’s true that Anglo-family-culture was never huggy-tuggy, kissy-wissy, lipsy-wipsy ― Italians in contrast love to hug and smear their wet lips all over the place, and some East Europeans Jews do it too ― , Anglo men were supposed to serve as solid role models for their children, especially sons. The ideal Anglo-American man was supposed to be upright and upstanding so that his kids would want to be like him and grow up properly. Sam Peckinpah’s father was that kind of a man. But Peckinpah was not that kind of father to his own kids. He liked to do as he pleased ― like the Duvall character in THE GREAT SANTINI ― , and he sometimes drove his kids up the wall. Notice that in THE GREAT SANTINI, the son finally rebels against his father because the latter is TOO MUCH of an individual. If the pre-GG fathers were tough men but also restrained by a sense of tradition and propriety, GG fathers were tough individuals who played by their own rules. It’s like when the Duvall character in THE GREAT SANTINI grabs another guy and dumps his head into a toilet bowl; later, he pulls a prank where he pretends to vomit and freaks everyone out. So, GG men combined the ideal of toughness received from their own fathers but mixed it with wild individuality/maverickism that they picked from a changing world. So, Peckinpah was both a family man and a wild man. He got divorced several times and had kids with different women; same with Norman Mailer. And he was too immersed in himself to ever play the role of responsible husband/father. Thus, it could have been that many Boomers weren’t so much reacting to the oppressive conformism of their fathers as their sheer neglect and self-centeredness. Take THE GRADUATE. Benjamin Braddock isn’t rebelling against his parents and the Robinsons because they’re trying to control and shape his life. If anything, Mr. Robinson tells him to take it easy and have fun. He tells Ben that youth goes by too fast, and so one should have as much fun as possible when young(though he didn’t mean “fuc* my wife”, to be sure); personally, I always liked Mr. Robinson in that movie and felt sorry for him; he was indeed like a ‘father’ and ‘pal’ to Ben. Though Ben’s father does admonish Ben a few times about making plans for the future, he doesn’t push the matter and seems resigned to Ben lying around the pool and taking it easy. Even the guy who says ‘plastics’ to Ben is only offering helpful advice. Both the Robinsons and Braddocks, both part of the GG, are into self-satisfaction and a form of individualism that would have been alien to most of American history before the rise of GG. To be sure, the people in THE GRADUDATE, being upper-middle-class, weren’t typical of most Americans. (I always loved Nichols’s movie as a fantasy of “what if I’d been born into a rich family and grew up in a big house with a swimming pool, etc.” Its appeal wasn’t all that different from THE BRADY BUNCH that, to me as a child, was like a fantasy life ― of big suburban house, safe neighborhood, kind/understanding parents, and mostly nice white kids ― when I was growing up in a ‘diverse’ part of the city with lots of Negroes, crime, and other lunacies.)
Despite the socio-economic advantages provided for the boomers by the GG, there was a psycho-cultural ambivalence that served as an invisible barrier between the two groups. If pre-GG parents wanted their kids to grow up imbued with the same values, GG parents wanted their kids, boomers, to do some exploring on their own; GG parents also wanted to be left alone to enjoy their own hobbies and barbeques. Take the guy in GRAN TORINO; it’s as if the great passion of his life is his car. Though the guy’s kids seem somewhat shallow and vapid, there’s an indication that the fault lies with their father. As a member of the GG, he had a steady job, could afford a house, and buy himself a nice car. If pre-GG parents saw their own families as the most important thing in their lives, the GG parents, even as they formed families, felt sort of cheated in life because they couldn’t help feeling that family obligations stood in the way of their self-fulfilment ― and some neglected their kids and invested their time in record collections, hobbies, cars, and etc. (Perhaps the most powerful example of this is the THE SWIMMER with Burt Lancaster who plays a member of the GG. Though a middle-aged man in the youth-centered world of the 60s, he goes about like he’s young forever. We learn that he was once a man who had it all ― wealth, wife and kids, status, etc. ― , but it was never enough and he took too many chances. Though a ‘loving’ father, he was never a proper parent to his kids but instead wanted to be ‘liked’ by them, to be like them, young and free forever. But his kids only grew up spoiled and reckless, messing up their own lives just like their old man. His life a ruin but unable to face reality, he forges a myth of eternal youth/romance for himself and pursues his stale muse as if he’s Odysseus finding his way back home. But can a restless man find a place to rest? Though he’s finally confronted with the grim truth and breaks down at the end, if he were placed in a mental institute he would probably go through the same cycles of denial and fantasy all over again, just like the character in SHUTTER ISLAND who, once cured, reverts to his delusions once again. Another film in the vein of THE SWIMMER is Elia Kazan’s THE ARRANGEMENT. It too is about middle age crisis, with as its lead a well-established executive who has it all but for whom enough or even more-than-enough isn’t enough. He wants something more than success, money, and respect from life; he wants happiness and meaning. While such hopes and dreams have always been with mankind, they may have been mass-culturalized for the first time with the Greatest Generation. Generally, for most of history, only the privileged had the time, energy, and means to wax romantic about the lack of happiness and meaning in their lives, while most people accepted the heavy weight of reality as the only way reality could be. But the Greatest Generation ― despite the Great Depression and World War II ― , thanks largely to the rise of mass culture via radio, movies, and standardized/prolonged public education, could sense and strive for a life as a dream even if the dream never materialized for most of them. Since the dream of individual fulfilment and freedom was ultimately beyond their grasp, they settled for the more generic and pragmatic American Dream, the chance of finding a steady job and buying a home in a nice community with good schools for kids. Of course, even for the boomers, the dreams of individual ambition never came true. How many would-be rock stars became real rock stars, how many would-be gurus became prophets of the age, how many would-be lovers found their dream lovers? How many would-be artists became great artists? Nevertheless, even if individual dreams didn’t come true for most boomers, e.g. even if every boomer didn’t become a Steve Jobs or Steven Spielberg, the mythic experience of youth for boomers and following generations felt more like a dream and had a carryover effect for all their lives. Even if they achieved little in life, boomers and later generations FELT like they were living a dream because the most formative part of their years was given full range to roam. How was this possible? Because unlike the GG and previous generations, they had the means of ― and society tolerated their ― suspending of social obligations and putting off the future indefinitely. If you were successful ― with a good job or married to a wealthy man ― as a member of the GG or earlier generation, you were still expected to be an adult and put away childish things. So, even if you made it, there was a psychological sense of having lost the dream or dreaminess; you had to psychologically cut your ties to youth and put it behind. But if you were a boomer, X-er, Y-er, or Z-er, it didn’t matter if you were a total loser since you could psychologically cling to your fabulous youth of boundless freedom and be encouraged by society to ‘keep dreaming forever’. So, even if you were a middle aged boomer who still hadn’t landed a good job or made something of your life, you still had your ‘dream of youth’, and that made you feel free. It’s like Brian Wilson mentally and professionally lost it after 1967, but it didn’t matter because he was lost in his own la-la land in his bedroom. Such putting-off-the-future would have been looked down in earlier generations but with the coming of the boomers, ‘feeling young forever’ became the psycho-cultural opiate that made people feel that their lives were a dream. Also, the fact that so many more people went to college ― which eventually became an institution of prolonged adolescence ― since the 60s anchored them to a dreamy view of life. For four years, they got to live out their fantasies of endless parties and all-night sessions and drugs and sex and radical chic and etc. Once out of college, the utopian dreams of the college experience lingered, which is why college graduates could work as waitresses for decades but keep believing that they were pursuing their dreams since they have some fancy college degrees. Though Occupy Wall Street claims to be about facing the hard facts of reality, it’s actually about living the fantasy that (1) there is the convenient 1% vs the 99%, (2) anyone with a college degree, no matter how worthless, should be guaranteed a well-paying job, and (3) the world could be changed by marches, slogans, and agitation that students picked up from their armchair radical professors in college. In the past, a waitress saw herself as a waitress. Now, waitresses, especially in big cities, see themselves as artists or some creative people who only happen to be working at menial jobs to carry them over til they find the truly meaningful dream of their lives. This explains why some boomers who are in their sixties still think they’re just waiting to ‘make it’ and be discovered. It’s almost turned into a mass neurosis and may even be useful as a kind of opiate of the educated masses, i.e. even if most college educated people won’t amount to much in life, their cherished memory of youth and its carryover dream-effect may keep them relatively docile in their fantasy state.) The Boomer generation could, in essence, have socially acted out the psychological neuroses that had built up in their GG parents. Though the SOCIAL revolution came to full fruition with the boomer generation, the PSYCHOLOGICAL seeds were planted by the GG. The song “Sounds of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel is suggestive of this, making it the perfect song for THE GRADUATE where Braddock and Elaine as boomers finally and loudly act out the neurosis of ‘quiet desperation’ and ‘silence’ that defined their parents. At one point, Mrs. Robinson tells Ben that she’d been an art student in her youth, with hopes and dreams, but she gave it up because she got pregnant with Elaine and was obliged to play the role of responsible/respectable wife and mother. Thus, she gave up her freedom of pursuing her dream and married someone she didn’t really love. If Mrs. Robinson had chased after her dream but still failed as an artist, she could at least have the memory of having tried, and that memory could linger as a kind of personal treasure. But having been cut off from her dream, it’s far worse than if she’d played and lost; she feels CHEATED of her one chance at happiness. Even though Mrs. Robinson accepted her lot in life, she spent her entire life feeling betrayed by circumstances. In a way, what she does with Ben is, at once, sympathetic, parasitic, and spiteful. In Ben, she sees youth that passed her by. She understands Ben’s anxieties following his graduation and wants to be his friend/lover. But she also wants suck on his youth like a vampiress. And in the end, she is spiteful against Ben and Elaine because they could have what she was ‘cheated’ out of. There’s a similar older person/younger person dynamic in Takeshi Kitano’s KIDS RETURN where an older boxer befriends an up-and-coming young boxer. The older man shows the younger guy the ropes of having a good time but out of spite and envy. Having failed as a boxer, he sets out to undermine the promising career of the young man.
Among the GG archetypes, consider the young guy who settles down to a life as a store clerk in BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. He’s seen the world during the war, and as a soldier, he was one of the many heroes who saved the world from tyranny. The war made him into SOMEBODY, especially in the camaraderie of men. His life as a civilian is certainly better than that of his parents, but his expectations are never fulfilled in post-war America. There is something of Mrs. Robinson in him. Though Mrs. Robinson played the social role as respectable wife/mother, she’s been psychologically rebelling all her life, not least by being emotionally cool to her own daughter. So, she makes the move on Benjamin Braddock, not least because she’s at the twilight years of sexual attractiveness; in a decade, she will be just another old woman; it is through Ben that she hopes to taste and possess what she gave up all too quickly in her youth; on the other hand, it was probably her natural impulsiveness that got her pregnant with Elaine at too young an age. On the one hand, she has some feelings for and is very protective of Elaine, but on the other, she feels Elaine stole her freedom by being born. And when Mr. Robinson tells Ben to have a good time, it’s as if he himself never had the fun he wish he had in his youth; he too became spouse/parent too fast.
In this sense, permissiveness didn’t really begin with the Boomers but with the GG. Though the grand narrative would have us believe that the Woodstock generation was rebelling against their parents, the fact is many parents didn’t much care what their kids were doing. Take the movie HAIR. Sure, the parents of Treat Williams’ character aren’t exactly happy about his hippie-ness, but they also seem rather neglectful, i.e. “my son’s a bum, and that’s that.” They’re not exactly Amy Chuas. Or consider Archie Bunker. Despite his arch-‘right-wing’ politics, Archie is actually pretty tolerant of Gloria’s flaky liberalism and even allows the ‘pinko Meathead’ to move in. GG parents gave us the baby boom, but many of them wanted to be left alone to do their own thing, and in order to have more time for themselves, their kids needed more time for themselves. Thus, kids having their own bedrooms wasn’t just about kids getting away from their parents but their parents ‘getting away from the kids’ and having the living room and den more to themselves. It wasn’t just about more freedom for the kids but more freedom for the parents. Let the kids listen to Rock n Roll in their bedrooms so the parents will be left alone to watch Sinatra on TV in the living room without hassle from the kids. Also, safe suburban streets and confidence in good schools with standardized curriculum in the post-war era meant that GG parents needn’t worry about their kids. The System was taking care of their kids, and so the parents could do their own things. It is in places where parents can’t trust the System to deliver that they become more involved with their kids. In nice white suburbs, parents take it for granted that their kids will be safe and get a good education. But if you’re an affluent white urbanite, sending your kids to some local public school with Nasty Negroes may not be an option, and so you get more involved.
Though Boomer parents have been known ― and even condemned ― for their permissiveness, they actually paved the way for neo-control-freakishness. Boomers said they wanted to be liberated from the ‘judgmentalism’ of GG parents, and so they would try to understand their own kids ― as in the Lovin’ Spoonful song, ‘Younger Generation’, which is in equal parts touching and ludicrous. But the ‘non-judgmentalism’ of the Boomers was really a form of neo-judgmentalism, whereupon tolerance became the Cult of Tolerance. So, if a GG parent who hated ‘niggers’ didn’t much care if his boomer kids were sympathetic to Negroes, Boomer parents wanted their children to be committed to Tolerance, i.e. “My kids MUST love Negroes even if too many Negroes act like savages.” Archie Bunker may vehemently disagree with Gloria, but his attitude is “I have my views and she has hers.” He will argue with her but not force his views on her. The GG, being less educated ― despite the G.I.. Bill ― were less ‘ideologically’ committed to their brand of morality and values. In contrast, boomer morality was wedded to theoretics and creativity and thus became associated with intellectualism and sacralization. It became ‘holier’. For Boomer parents, their kids had to worship MLK and love them Negroes(at least from a safe distance). But actually, not all Boomers were alike, and besides, they tended to be awful confused ― consider that in the Summer of Love of 1967, the Counterculture was into both “All You Need Is Love”-flower power as embodied by the Beatles/hippies AND radical-revolutionary blood-thirst as embodied by Che Guevara cult and BONNIE & CLYDE. Flower Power grows out of the barrel of a gun? If some Boomers just wanted to take it easy and truly be non-judgmental, others wanted to replace the old judgmentalism with neo-judgementalism sold as ‘non-judgmentalism’. (Indeed, what is often called ‘non-judgmental’ today is actually far more judgmental than stuff of yesteryear. How many times have liberals said that the public is more sympathetic to homosexuals because TV shows and movies have become more ‘non-judgmental’ in regard to gays? In truth, pop culture is very judgmental in a pro-gay way, making homos out to be saints or angels while making those opposed to the radical gay agenda out to be mentally and spiritually sick ‘homophobes’. Also, what we are witnessing is not sympathy for gays but mindless and sheepish servitude to the gay agenda among young people and even old people who’ve been battered endlessly with the notion that loving gays is the highest virtue after worshiping Jews and MLK ― and maybe Oprah. Given the moral and intellectual conceit of the boomer generation ― even ‘conservative’ boomers have swallowed most of the moralistic tripe of 60s social struggles ― , it is difficult for them to resist the moral demands of their kids brainwashed by political correctness and pop culture. Though most boomers were not radical, gay, or Jewish, the sort of people who took over the elite institutions and gained control over the levers of the media were radical, Jewish, and/or gay; and so, most kids of boomers and the kids of those kids came under radical/Jewish/gay indoctrination. Since boomers had been telling their kids and grandkids how wonderful they’d been in the 60s for having marched with MLK, taken part in the Summer of Love, joined anti-war rallies, or been at Woodstock, they have little in the way of moral defense when their kids and grandkids demand to know why they don’t support stuff like ‘gay marriage’. If boomers are all about more freedom, equality, and diversity ― and if indeed they’re supposed to be ‘forever young’, hip, and ‘with it’ ― , then surely they must side with the gay agenda since most young people are for it. Since boomers have defined themselves with the mantra of ‘forever young’, they have a difficult time saying NO to demands of young people and, instead, just try to appropriate whatever happens to be hip with young people. The irony of this is that stuff like ‘gay marriage’ didn’t originate among young people themselves but was planted in their minds by radical boomers. So, in a way, young people today are little more than sheep following the pied piper of radical boomers. Thus, aging radical boomers, by controlling the hearts and minds of young morons, have appropriated the cult of youth for themselves and for their own sick ends. Thus finally, the radical boomers are winning over the anti-radical boomers. Recall that in 1968 and 1972, the majority of boomers actually went with Nixon. Though radical boomers were culturally on the rise, most boomers weren’t socially and politically on the same wavelength, and indeed the non-radical boomers would elect Reagan for two terms and Bush for one term. Thus, it seemed for awhile as if non-radical boomers ultimately won over the radical ones. But the radical ones, in controlling the media and academia, turned a whole generation of young people into mindless drones addicted to Lady Gaga, Oprah, Ellen Degeneris, Kanye West, and Howard Zinn. And then these kids, trained like pop-cultural red guards, attacked their own non-radical boomer parents for not supporting stuff like ‘gay marriage’, and in time, many non-radical boomer parents relented to the pressure, which explains why Laura Bush and Cindy McCain support ‘gay marriage’ just like their dumb brainwashed children. With morons like this, American conservatism is over and finished. Not that leftism triumphed in America. What passes for progressivism today is elite decadent gay privilege-ism, Jewish globalist Zionism, Negro tribalism, Mexican La Raza nationalism, rich affluent bitchy Ivory Tower feminism, Lady Gaga, and Rap music. What any of this has to do with the ideals of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, or even the Russian Revolution is beyond me. It’s really decadent capitalism, mindless hedonism, and neo-tribalisms hiding behind the rhetoric of ‘progress’. As for the generation older than the boomers, they’ve long been swept out of institutions of power and don’t even count anymore.) Since the most fervently ideologically committed boomers ― perhaps not indicative of most boomers ― took over the academia and media, they molded the hearts and minds of the post-boomer generations and created a whole bunch of Oleannas(check David Mamet film) and Lady Gagas. The New Iron Tolerance became something other than having a live-and-let-live attitude toward freaks and weirdos but elevation of homosexuality as something ‘healthy’ and ‘rational’(and if you disagree, you’re a mentally deranged ‘homophobe’). Again, what goes by the name of ‘non-judgmental’ TV shows about homosexuals are extremely very judgmental and advocation-oriented. They don’t show gays as real gays but gays as idealized and airbrushed perfect-people. And when the weird side of homosexuality is shown, it’s shown to be funny and charming than foul and offensive. In contrast, the media present people who oppose the gay agenda as ugly, hideous, and hateful. Liberal control of media is hardly different from Nazi control of media or communist control of media. People who oppose the gay agenda are dehumanized. Just as Southern whites once depicted blacks as a bunch of stupid ignorant ‘coons’, liberal Jews now use the media to depict anti-gay-agenda people as subhuman neanderthals. The same media would tell us that gangster rappers are cool and a disgusting gay pride parade is ennobling. Consider that most of the sexual abusers of young people are gay men, but the liberal Jewish-controlled media have associated such abuse only with the arch-conservatism of the Catholic Church. While the Church should be blamed for having policies that attract gay men into its ranks(any organization that requires healthy men to repress their sexuality forever isn’t gonna attract the creme of the crop), the sexual abuses in the Church are not happening because of Christian doctrine but because of gay sexual perversion, and indeed there’s a lot of that taking place in the fashion, music, and movie industries; many young people have to give a gay a head to get ahead. But only the Catholic Church comes under liberal Jewish scrutiny. Jewish power is so foul that the most disgusting sight to behold in America is conservatives sucking up to Jews despite the vile Jewish animosity toward all proud white people. Just as the liberal Cult of Tolerance is actually a form of neo-intolerance, the Cult of Non-Judgmentalism is a form of neo-judgmentalism. They don’t show gays as real gays are or blacks as real blacks are but show gays and blacks as too-good-to-be-true folks, and that’s why so many mindless young people have fallen for the Magic Negro and Gay Saint.
Anyway, the point is the Boomers ― at least the radical ones among them who came to control the elite institutions of this country ― were actually far more power-hungry(and self-righteous)than the GG, just like Jews, though critical of Wasp power, turned out to be far more power-lusting than Anglos ever were. Though GG parents had hopes for their kids, they accepted that their kids would grow differently(and that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing since the GG, though better off their own parents, had gone through hard times during their youth and had been rushed into adult responsibilities as soldiers, workers, builders, and parents); they accepted that they wouldn’t understand their kids and vice versa, and that was that. In contrast, Boomers, who laid claim to the Eternal Flame/Fountain of Youth, wanted to understand their kids and wanted to be understood by their kids. Though this understanding could be sympathetic and gentle, it could also be hardened and institutionalized into a dogma ― just like the Jewish wish to be understood after the Holocaust turned into a demand to be not only understood but worshiped and obeyed. Boomers erected huge icons ― JFK, MLK, Dylan, Beatles, and etc. ― to be honored and remembered by their kids for all eternity. Radical/liberal Boomers turned American history and culture into one giant memorial to their generation. GG may not have much cared for Rock n Roll, but it didn’t try to force Sinatra and Dean Martin on the boomers. But when it appeared that the X, Y, and Z generations might go their own ways, Boomers instituted political correctness so that everyone would carry on to shoulder the uncompleted legacy of the 60s, i.e. supporting Obama would be to fulfill the twin dream of JFK and MLK, and etc. And notice how every Rocker, infected with Lennon-itis, wants to save the world. Even thug rappers act like moralists and preachers, as if they have something important to say. Bluesmen of old were more honest; they never pretended to ‘speak da troof’, whereas every punkass rapper thinks he’s yapping some profound social/moral truth about America even though 90% of his lyrics are about ‘hos’, ‘niggaz’, and ‘mothafuc*kaz’.
So, is it any wonder that now we have the phenomenon of elite parents who wanna control and supervise every aspect of their kids’ lives, ALL THE WHILE, pretending to be totally ‘understanding’ and ‘tolerant’? Of course, we’re talking about the post-boomer parents, but they came under the influence of radical boomer ideologues in colleges and media. On the one hand, they are into Tolerance and Non-judgementalism, but both are ideological dogmas drummed into their kids from cradle. Take Ken Burns, the maggotiest white boy that ever done lived. Oh sure, he’s such a loving and supportive dad, unlike the tough patriarchs of old. But his children have been drummed with political correctness from the cradle, and so all they know is MLK-ism. So, his girls say just the things Kenny boy wants to hear, but he pretends that he, Mr. Nice Guy, is so moved by his girls’ natural wisdom and intelligence! It’s really a hideously disingenuous kind of moral narcissism. By praising his daughters’ political correctness, he is of course praising himself for having brainwashed them to think the way they do. But as long as he did it in a huggy-tuggy and gooey-ooey soft manner, he can pretend that he didn’t force his girls to think in a PC way. This is what Allen Bloom meant when he warned us of the Ideology of Niceness in the 1980s. What seems Nice and Pleasant on the outside can serve as a reason for not thinking honestly and courageously. Since white people should all be ‘nice’, they must all be made to swallow the pill that prevents them from having ‘un-nice’ thoughts. Indeed, I wonder how Ken Burns would react if his daughter asked, “But dad, aren’t Negroes tougher and more aggressive than the white race? Isn’t that why Jack Johnson kicked all those white boys’ ass? Isn’t that why most of the racial violence in the US is black-on-white? Isn’t that why blacks dominate sports? Isn’t that why many white women are running off to Negroes cuz they’re more excited by a Negro stud than some faggoty-maggoty white boy dweeb like you?” See, there’s some truth, but the Ideology of Nice doesn’t allow it. ‘Nice’ isn’t very nice when it comes to truth. If Ken Burns’ daughter had the guts to say such, I’ll bet Burns would throw a hissy-wissy fit about how ‘noxious’, ‘odious’, ‘toxic’, ‘divisive’, ‘rabid’, and ‘virulent’ it all be. (By the way, the tyranny of Niceness perhaps has its roots in Christianity. Christian folks have long pretended to be oh-so-nice, oh-so-kind, oh-so-gentle, oh-so-caring, and etc. They’re supposed to be filled with love for their fellow brethren and sistren and whatever-else-that-ran-out-from-underneath-a-rock. But this cult of niceness is actually a moral threat, i.e. “If you don’t accept our niceness and join our holy Church of Niceness for all mankind, YOU must NOT be nice yourself, and so we must force you to be ‘nice’.” It is such soft moral bullying that made many people join the Church.)
GG parents were actually more tolerant, at least in the sense that they were willing to take a live-and-let-live attitude to their kids. Some of them were angry with the excesses of the 60s, but they still let their kids grow up in their own way. Just consider Ronald Reagan and his kids. Reagan couldn’t have been too pleased with how his kids were turning out, but he accepted the reality. But imagine politically correct parents discovering that their kids don’t go for ‘gay marriage’ or ‘nigger-loving’. They’d try to force their kids into mental asylums. Or take the hideous Jews. It’s not enough for Jews that we accept them as good Americans(though I don’t know why we should since most American Jews are a**holes.) We must love them, honor them, worship them, and never ever criticize them. Thus, Tolerance of Jews has come to mean Worship of Jews. If Clinton is OF the boomer generation, Obama is the CREATION OF the boomer generation, and he’s about the most hysterical and ridiculous political cult in American history. And because of the power of PC, we cannot even have an honest debate on many issues and figures.
Peckinpah felt an ambivalence about the Counterculture generation. There’s an account in SAM PECKINPAH: A PORTRAIT IN MONTAGE(written by Garner Simmons) that tells of Peckinpah’s daughter bringing her hippie boyfriend ― with long hair and beard ― on the set of THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE. Warren Oates shooting chickens in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, kids torturing ants and scorpions in THE WILD BUNCH, the grouse-hunting in STRAW DOGS, and the chicken-head shooting in PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID illustrate that Peckinpah wasn’t the most sensitive person when it came to handling animals. Anyway, the hippie-boyfriend ― who happened to be a vegetarian to boot ― told Peckinpah that it was wrong to shoot the Gila monster(for the opening scene of the movie). Peckinpah, annoyed by this, told the hippie that he would spare the lizard if the hippie shaved off his beard; the hippie refused and the Gila monster got shot real good ― in fact, after the first shooting didn’t create the desired effect, it was sewn up and shot a second time. Peckinpah and the Counterculture may have shared the romantic ideal of rebellion and maverick-ness, but Peckinpah believed in stuff-real-men-do whereas the Counterculture tended to produce sensitive souls like Terrence Malick ― not in a million yrs would Peckinpah have made something as inanely flaky as TREE OF LIFE. Peckinpah, for all his disgust with the Vietnam War, was Mr. Gunpowder, not Mr. Flower-power.
Yet, some of Peckinpah’s biggest fans were younger people, who seemed to take to his vision of the West and his ‘extreme style’ more readily than the older generation was willing to. To be sure, THE WILD BUNCH, as explosive a film as ever made, was highly lauded by many critics, most of them considerably older than the boomers. Stanley Kauffmann, Pauline Kael, John Simon, and Penelope Gilliatt who praised the movie were Peckinpah’s generational peers.
But as a statement of a new kind of cinema ― of a New Hollywood favoring the personal artist over the studio professional ― , THE WILD BUNCH had the greatest impact on a new generation of moviegoers and film-makers. PATTON, the much bigger hit and winner of Best Picture the following year, didn’t have the same cultural impact, and its director, Franklin Schaffner, has been all but forgotten(which is unfortunate and unfair since he made his share of very movies ― not only PATTON but THE PLANET OF APES, PAPILLON, and NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA). The Counterculture was naive with its idealism but at times penetratingly insightful about the dark side of American history and life, i.e. they were insipid in their proposals but interesting in their critique. Take Oliver Stone, whose mythology of Kennedy in the movie JFK is just plain dumb but whose hallucinatory exploration of Nixon’s soul makes for one of the greatest (psycho-)political films ever.
Oddly enough, even more than THE WILD BUNCH, the movie that captured the imagination of the so-called Film Generation was John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS. If THE WILD BUNCH clearly represented a new kind of cinema ― where the darkness was clearly illuminated for all to see ― , THE SEARCHERS was fascinating for working on two planes at once. THE WILD BUNCH was the triumph of personal film-making, Peckinpah using near-total-freedom to make the movie he wanted to make. In contrast, THE SEARCHERS seemed like other Ford westerns on the outside but throbbed with something considerably darker on the inside. One might even say Ford was both aware or unaware(or pretending to be unaware)of what he was doing; thus the film’s tautness and restraint could have been personal as well as institutional. Few films are, at once, so very expressive and so very repressive, so very sexual and so very puritanical, but then, paradoxically, so very expressive because it is so very repressive, so very sexual because it’s so very puritanical. It was made when the Hayes Code was still operative, and it was made by Ford, a man of old-fashioned sensibilities who embraced simple moral truths and disdained overt intellectualism. And yet, the movie seemed to intimate far more than its adherence to Western conventions would suggest. At its core was a dark secret, indeed more tantalizing than an open secret for being a dark secret ― not only in the terms of the character’s psyche but national psyche on race and sexuality. (And though it’s about whites and Indians, it was suggestive of white fears about the savage Negro conquering white women and scalping the scrotum of manhood off the white male. After all, the character Ethan, played by John Wayne, is first seen returning from his involvement in the Civil War. He’s especially eager to fight and kill Indians because Southern whites have been stabbed in the back by Northern whites and may have to watch their women be raped and wooed by stronger and fiercer Negroes with bigger muscles and penises. THE SEARCHERS is like THE BIRTH OF A NATION in the West, albeit with greater irony and shades of complexity.)
By the late 60s and early 70s, film-makers could openly deal with the ‘secrets’ of American history as pertaining to race, ‘genocide’, rape(and other sexual matters), and etc. It may have been liberating, but open secrets tend not to be as provocative(and their potency dissipates once being aired). It’s the dark secret that keeps one guessing and brooding, and THE SEARCHERS was that kind of movie. The secret, while undisclosed, made thumping noises in the closet.
John Ford, the staunch stylistic conservative of American cinema, seemed to lurching into a new territory while pretending to make just another Western. Oddly enough, Ford’s last several movies are stylistically among the stodgiest while thematically, at least by implication, among the most ‘subversive’, culminating perhaps with MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, which is almost like a Western as TWILIGHT ZONE episode ― its stark staginess takes on an almost abstract dimension, as in the TWILIGHT ZONE episode where an actor comes to confuse his role in a TV show for real life, i.e. when fiction becomes reality, live the fiction.
THE WILD BUNCH was among the American films of the late 60s that finally said all that could be said and showed all that could be shown. MIDNIGHT COWBOY did the same for urban life and sexuality. But in their open declarations of intention and expression, there was less to probe and think about ― at least in a speculative way ― than with THE SEARCHERS. It’s like a woman who exposes her nudity for all to see doesn’t fire up the same kind of imagination as a woman who veils it. Brazen naked sexiness is just that. Let me qualify what I mean by ‘think’ here. Of course, there’s much to analyze, study, and appreciate in THE WILD BUNCH, and not all of its meanings are plainly visible. What I mean by ‘think’ in this context is inquiring as to the ‘true intentions’ or ‘true feelings’ of the artist. THE WILD BUNCH is rich in meanings, but they are not hidden(perhaps except in the psychological details, especially between Pike and Deke), however ironic and twisted they may be. THE SEARCHRS, in contrast, is a movie of many hidden/repressed motives and motifs. The secrets are silent, but we can hear the silence saturated in dark dense matter. John Ford rarely gave a candid interview about his movies, especially to young cinephile acolytes eager to intellectually ‘read’ meaning from and into his movies; he always pretended to be just another Hollywood director who made movies to entertain the public, and that was that. But many Boomers who watched THE SEARCHERS in their youth or on TV picked up certain signals that took on special meaning. It was as if Ford, while playing the traditional Hollywood director, was slipping secrets to the younger generation that were, in a way, no less dark than what it was getting from William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. The boomers might even find something ‘cool’ about all this. Consider the possibility that the old masters ― Ford, Hitchcock(especially with VERTIGO, PSYCHO, and THE BIRDS), Welles(with TOUCH OF EVIL), etc. ― were actually on the side of the young or the ‘new’, subverting the system from within. (The aging Bunuel also came to be respected in the same manner in the late 60s and early 70s with films such as BELLE DE JOUR, DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, PHANTOM OF LIBERTY, and THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE. Despite all the anti-old rhetoric of the Counterculture, young boomers generally tended to feel intellectually insecure and therefore appreciated the possibility that old established masters might actually be on their side; it was like having grandparents on one’s side against the parents. Thus, boomers could have the cake and eat it too: be young and rebellious AND have the approval of wise elders. But old people got something in the bargain too: though old and over-the-hill and all-too-often underappreciated or neglected by their generational peers and the GG, they found themselves relevant once more through the embracement by idealistic and virile youth; and there was an element of this in Peckinpah’s relation to Counterculture in the early 70s. It was the young cinephiles of the 50s and 60s in both France and America who championed the cults of filmmakers such as Sam Fuller and Robert Aldrich.)
The ‘Counterculture’ is something of a misleading label because it was never a unified movement. What are we to make of Dylan, who is considered a Counterculture figure, but opted out of the scene at its height? When Haight-Ashbury was happening, Dylan was leading a quiet middle class life in Woodstock NY. And what are we to make of the Beatles? Though embraced by the Counterculture, what could be more mainstream than the Beatles during the Summer of Love when parents of the boomers dug the music too ― and when so many Beatles songs were turned into elevator music or muzak? Counterculture embraced both Mao and Gandhi, both Che Guevara and Aldous Huxley, both Hendrix and Hesse, both nature and computers, both Rolling Stones and French New Wave intellectualism ala Jean-Luc Godard. Godard and Stones even made a movie together called ONE PLUS ONE(sold in the US as SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL), but did Godard and Stones know what the other was really about? As an outward fashion, the Counterculture embodied everything that seemed to be part of the Great Change taking place in the 60s, but many of these changes had little in common and indeed were often contradictory. Take Michelangelo Antonioni’s BLOW UP and ZABRISKIE POINT. The former features a Yardbirds concert but to point out the mindless barbarism and herd-mentality of youth culture. The latter seems sympathetic to young militant radicals but also presents them as confused and superficial. Same can be said of THE GRADUATE by Mike Nichols who said in an interview that Ben and Elaine will probably end up like their parents.
If 60s Boomers were about going with the Feeling ― of drugs, sex, and Rock n Roll ― , Antonioni and Nichols, being older, were naturally more skeptical and cerebral in their attitude to life. And though Peckinpah loved to drink and have a wild time, he belonged to a generation that divided business and pleasure. Business was professionalism and pleasure was partying, which is why Peckinpah was very dictatorial on the set and insisted on professionalism from everyone in the crew ― though he violated this principle himself when he took to drinking on the set. For Peckinpah, fun was what you did away from work to relax and have a good time. Boomers, in contrast, spiritualized and philosophized fun into a kind of universal-timeless ideal. (In time, this ‘anarchic’ outlook on life would produce such havoc that the boomers, by the 80s, became the new control-freaks. Compare the long-haired Steve Jobs of the 70s who used to dip his foot inside a toilet bowl to Jobs of the 80s and 90s with well-groomed hair and ruthless organizational skills/demands. In the 70s, there was even talk of creating and practicing a ‘democratic’ and ‘collective’ way of making movies, but it never panned out, just like experiments with commune living almost always failed. Without authority, hierarchy, and chain of command, nothing could get done. And after the massive troubles of Woodstock and the disaster at Altamont, a new science of managing rock concerts developed and, by the 80s, rock concerts were among the most tightly controlled public events in the world. It was as if anarchy and rebellion had been institutionalized.) Woodstock wasn’t just a rock concert but a utopian ideal, the ‘Woodstock Nation’. So, hippies didn’t dance just to have fun but took acid and moved their fingers in weird ways to get in touch with cosmic vibes. Fun wasn’t diversion to drown out the stress of work but the core meaning of life. Since fun was turned into philosophy that might be called ‘funology’, all of life had to be fun. If something wasn’t fun, it wasn’t good. And since fun was supposed to be meaningful, something that was fun but meaningless had no value. To the boomers, the older generation sought out fun for escapism from their dreary, meaningless, crass, alienated, or shallow work. Thus, the Robinsons drinking in THE GRADUATE are merely indulging in a narcotic to drown out the numbness and boredom. And, the older bourgeois men and women in Cassavetes’ FACES seem desperately to be looking for fun ― any kind of fun ― to escape from their dull and dreary middle class lives. In contrast, Benjamin Braddock is looking for meaningful fun: fun as freedom, fun as personal meaning, fun as personal expression, fun as true love, and etc. An element of this ideal lives on in educators who say the problem of public education is “learning hasn’t been made to be ‘fun’ for kids.”
There was some truth to the Counterculture’s critique of diversionary fun of the GG. This is perhaps even more relevant to Japan where, since the end of WWII, salarymen have been toiling away long dreary hours and then looking for empty ‘fun’ after work with excessive drinking, pachinko playing, karaoke singing, and maybe even banging prostitutes dressed up as schoolgirls. Fun of this kind has no value but to ease stress after work that is un-fulfilling.
On the other hand, only a hopeless dreamer could possibly think most work could be fun. (Some communist nations, by having bands play at work sites, even pretended that laborers were enjoying themselves in meaningful and happy work.) Most work isn’t fun, but they’re still necessary, and that’s that.
One of the most annoying things about certain highfaluting film critics is they tend to disdain movies-as-fun, as if the role of cinema is to answer the questions of history and life itself. Since many such critics don’t really work― or never held a REAL job in their lives ― , they feel free to radicalize cinema into some pure ideal(as Platonic philosophers seeking the light from inside the cave). But for people who must work ― and feel tired after a full day of work ― , a movie or TV show that takes their minds off things has real value. After one’s mind and senses have been engaged with work all day, one may not want to engage something very ‘deep’ and ‘complex’. True, most TV shows and movies are foul, offensive, and/or stupid than relaxing, but ‘shallow’ entertainment has its place in society. In prehistoric times, after a long grueling hunt, the fellas got together around the campfire and told silly jokes ― like the primitive tribe in APOCALYPTO had fun with a ‘dick joke’ after a hunt. A full-time philosopher like Socrates, like highfaluting film critics, had all day to think of ‘higher things’, but most people through history had to expend their mental and physical energies with hard work, and so after a tough day, they had little energy left for ‘higher’ stuff. And even if the work wasn’t mentally taxing, expending a lot of physical energy sapped mental energy too; try reading a book on philosophy after digging ditches for 12 hrs. (On the other hand, it would be foolish to hope that most people will think of ‘higher things’ if they could have more free time and leisure. Indeed, the problem with today’s pop culture is it caters not so much to tired people who need some escapist diversion from stress and work but to idle bums whose bodies are packed with excessive unused energy. Compare a Negro fifty years ago with a Negro today. Fifty years ago, the Negro or Negress had to work all day as chauffeur, factory worker, cook, porter, driver, maid, mistress, nanny, and etc. So, when the Negro or Negress came home, he or she was tired and wanted some fun stuff to help them relax. They needed fun as a pick-me-up because they felt footsore-and-ass-falling-on-floor. But today, a whole bunch of Negroes be living off welfare or working at some bogus lazy-ass government jobs. This is also true of all those white yobs in the U.K. Many never go to work, and so they are filled with excess energy for which they need some kind of outlet. And so, they are not watching TV and movies to relax but as a kind of fantasy vessel for their wildass mothafuc*ing energies. A wild and crazy Negro in the past had to pick cotton, and the hard work absorbed much of his jungle-ugabugary. But now, so many Negroes are used to either skipping school or just fooling around in school, living on welfare and doing some bogus government job. Negroes just have too much excess energy that doesn’t get used, which is why Bill Clinton suggested Midnight Basketball in the 90s. Maybe if them Negroes be dribbling and dunking ball, they be robbing and raping less. It’s like the joke in the film FULL METAL JACKET: “How do you stop five black guys from raping a white girl? Throw them a basketball.” With all that excess energy, no wonder Negroes be fuc*ing everything left and right, having babies like baboons, and flash mobbing stores and beating up white folks.
It’s no wonder Obama had so much energy to run for president. He’d been doing nothing all his life but being just a lazy politician. He looked all peppy and stuff because he’d done nothing but dream and prepare for running for president with the full support of Jewish money and media. But white people were loathe to admit this since the cult of ‘white guilt’ drummed into them that blacks, especially ‘clean cut’ ones, are owed a fast-track to success in life to make up for all the obstacles blacks had faced in the past. Obama understood this stupid white psychology and rode the entitlement train all the way to the white house. Anyway, if mass entertainment in the past was made mainly for hardworking adults who needed something to relax with, the new mass entertainment panders to the excessive unspent energy of stupid lazy young people and adults who don’t work at real jobs. Old movies were like a drink after work. Today’s movies are like meth for fools too lazy or too unwilling to work. So, given the way most people are, having more freedom will not direct them to ‘higher’ or ‘more meaningful’ thingss but to even dumber and stupider things. Compare the British working class of fifty years ago to today’s yobs. But the problem was evident even with the educated middle class since the 60s. The boomers that came of age in the 60s were living in a golden age; they had freedom, money, and choices undreamed of by earlier generations, but what did so many of them do with this freedom? They went for stupid stuff like People’s Park in Berkeley. A whole bunch of college kids were into little more than rock music, drugs, sex, and radical politics of stupidity which required little thought and just a lot of empty slogans. And this pretty much continued on into the 1980s, a time when even conservative students cared for little else but rock music, MTV, and megamall churches. If indeed American conservatives really cared about ‘higher things’, they would be controlling the academia and would have a serious stake in the making of arts and culture. But what passes for conservative ideas, values, and visions come down to country music, materialist libertarianism that favors Wall Street Jews, mindless pro-Zionism that targets Palestinians who never did anything to harm American whites, cheering for bimbos like Sarah Palin, electing a ‘beer buddy’ moron like George W. Bush, and watching TV cartoons made by disgusting liberal freaks. Both Charles Murray and Peggy Noonan think THE SIMPSONS is the greatest thing since sliced bread when, for all its zany wit and cleverness, it’s little more than gobs of anti-human foulness, cultural feces clogged inside the toilet of the imagination. Over the past decades, what with all sorts of new technologies and programs, young people have gained more free time than ever before. So, how is the great bulk of that free time spent by most young people? Lady Gaga, which explains why so many young dummies go for ‘gay marriage’.)
The true ‘tragedy’ of modern times isn’t about people working ‘too hard’ and having insufficient energy for ‘higher things’ nor about specialists dwelling on complex theories and not having a good grasp of reality ― after all, we do need academics to run universities and do research ― , but about people who don’t work and don’t think, people with too much freedom but no will to use that freedom in any meaningful sense. The modern welfare system has created a vast pool of moronic ne’er-do-wells. An idealist might have thought that if a person is burdened with less laborious work, he will use his ‘free’ time for ‘creative’ and ‘intellectual’ pursuits; since he’s brimming with energy, he will favor challenging and interesting and worthy pursuits than the merely the diversionary and escapist. But for most people, less work and more freedom means only more trash culture. Many black women on welfare don’t have to work ― and their kids don’t have to work ― , but all they wanna do is watch TV and listen to rap and act like apes. Whole bunch of white trash guys in Fishtown(Charles Murray’s white working-class town) have more leisure time than their parents did, but many of them just play more videogames and surf porn sites. Most idealists are intellectuals, and the egalitarians among them seem to think that since all humans are supposedly alike, all humans would act as they themselves would with ample time for ‘creativity’ and ‘intellectualism’. But how many white trash folks and Negroes are gonna be like Steven Pinker or Charles Murray?
People are not alike, and most people don’t care about creativity or intellectualism. Free time just means more mindless fun with TV, drugs, video games, comic book superhero movies, and porn. So, the only way most people can have meaning in their lives is to work more, not work less. But our welfare system has allowed entire populations of people to do no work at all, and our mania for universal college degrees has sent too many useless young people to universities where the main lesson for many of them is partying and/or protesting. Instead of learning to think, work, and earn, many just learn to party, look for fun, and demand their ‘rights’. Just look at privileged Sandra Fluke demanding free contraceptives to be shoved up her cunt. Just look at Obama, whose entire life has been one entitlement ride of having everything handed to him for free; it’s no wonder that his message to young people is that they too should be entitled to all these ‘positive rights’. Look at the result in the US and UK. Look at the yobs. With all their free time, are they going to the library to borrow and read books? No, they won’t even loot a bookstore since they’re too busying looting X-boxes to play videogames and LCDs to watch sports and porn. Even intellectualism has been degraded into a mindless form of fun. So many kids in the US and UK who shouldn’t attend college go to college anyway to party and to major in ‘fun’ subjects which flatter them as cutting edge radicals or holy victims simply because they wear certain t-shirts, shout choice slogans, and feel their egos inflated with inflated grades. Even intellectualism and creativity have been debased, but this is to be expected in an age that treats Quentin Tarantino as a great artist.
Peckinpah’s troubled ‘alliance’ with the Counterculture is evident throughout PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. Ostensibly, he’s on the side of Billy and his youthful gang(who embody the boomer cult of youth and rebellion), but his heart is really with Pat Garrett. This is all the more confused since Garrett as Sheriff seems to be hanging with people(big ranchers and soulless/corrupt lawmen) he doesn’t really care for ― Billy says to him, “You’re in poor company, Pat.” ― , i.e. he’d rather be hanging with Billy and his gang like he used to before he ‘sold’ himself to the Sante Fe Ring. But the film never makes it clear what exactly it is about Billy and his gang that’s supposed to make them so appealing. So, okay, Billy is popular with the girls. Okay, the fellas don’t lived by a fixed timetable. (Indeed, when one of the more functional outlaws ― played by Rudy Wurlitzer, the screenwriter himself ― shakes Billy and another compatriot awake to go rustling for some cattle, Billy says, “I hates the son of a bitch who’s full of himself...”) So, okay, they’ve befriended a nice Mexican played by Emilio Fernandez(who played Mapache in THE WILD BUNCH), as if that’s sufficient enough to make a band of outlaws into good decent fellas. But whatever they’re supposed to represent or embody, they seem mostly aimless, pointless, and directionless. Peckinpah doesn’t have the same feeling for them as he did for characters in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, MAJOR DUNDEE, THE WILD BUNCH, and THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE. It was like an older man trying(and pretending) to understand and appeal to young people when, in fact, he would rather preferred to hang around his own kind. (Or conversely, it was like a young kid pretending to enjoy the company of older people dealing with serious matters when he really wanted to run off with other young people and play ball.) In this light, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID doesn’t feel sincere. Like Pat Garrett, Peckinpah was in ‘poor company’, the sort of people he didn’t have natural rapport with, but he made himself believe that he was, which makes the movie doubly insincere. (Ironically, Garret seems to be in the right company with older guys like Chisum and the governor. If anything, Billy and his gang seem like ‘poor company’ to Pat.) In the movie, Pat Garrett comes most to life among older characters who really seem to have culturally belong in the world Peckinpah presents. Consider the scene where Garrett goes to meet the governor. The rapport and understanding they have for one another is real and sincere. And though Garrett’s relation with Chisum is complicated, they seem to understand one another as man to man. So, the notion of Garrett betraying his REAL self to find a niche in the corrupt establishment comes across somewhat forced. If anything, Garrett’s move away from the Billy and the gang and his finding a place in the establishment constitute the discovery of his true self. He may be betraying his friend Billy but he’s not betraying his true self; if anything, he’d betrayed his true self all his life by wasting too many years among outlaw ne-er-do-wells. But the movie is so insistent on making Billy the Kid into Billy the Christ that the real meanings have been confused.
Though the spiritualization of Billy the Kid as a Christ-like figure in the movie is annoying, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is, in good measure, a work of ‘religious’ iconography, especially in its selection of locale, art/set design, costumes, visual texture, and etc. In a sense, it is Peckinpah’s ANDREI RUBLEV. (As with the DVD audio-commentators ― Paul Seydor, David Weddles, and Garner Simmons ― , Antonioni came to my mind while watching the movie long ago. It could even be regarded as something like a Western THE GODFATHER, surely a movie that couldn’t have failed to impress Peckinpah in the early 70s ― the opening scene of BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA may also owe something to Puzo/Coppola’s movie. But Tarkovsky may have been closer to what Peckinpah was aiming for ― even considering the possibility that Peckinpah never watched ANDREI RUBLEV. Indeed, it’s difficult to name another Western that went so far to sanctify the West, though, to be sure, I’m using the term in a rather loose way, especially given the somewhat obscene and perverse narrative and details of the movie. I don’t mean that the film’s subject, let alone message, is spiritual ― for me, Billy’s Christ symbolisms are mostly unconvincing and silly ― but rather that a reverential nostalgia permeates every square inch of the screen. One might mention ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, but that’s more a work of mythology than spirituality. Leone’s movie is about pagan giants ― Western heroes elevated to god status ― taking a last stand, whereas Peckinpah’s vision is closer to the corn, soil, and clay.) There are two kinds of religious art: the wholesome vision radiant with the holy spirit and rough vision rife with the tension of reality. The ‘grace’ scenes in TREE OF LIFE is pure wholesomeness(and sickening to the stomach). Tarkovsky’s spiritualism didn’t distill purity into a bottle apart from the reality of man and nature. He was no Platonist. What interested Tarkovsky was the ‘paganesque’ impurity of things of this world. Spiritual truth didn’t exist apart from the world. It was something that emanated from the mud, blood, pain, and the horror. It arose from man’s cruelty, folly, and sin, like mist rising from a lake after a storm. Just as the soul gains experience, shape, and meaning through the biography of the body, religion/spirituality gains its history, purpose, and promise through the particular travails of a people of a culture and nation; this explains why Tarkovksy was as much a Russian nationalist and nature worshiper as a Christian. In this sense, the Russian Orthodox Church was a way of reverting Christianity back to a kind of Judaism for gentiles with their own pagan-derived cultural baggage. After all, while Jews believed in the one-and-only-timeless God, their own relation to Him was of a particular blood, history, and meaning. God may be timeless but Jewish sense of time in relation to God was particular, going back to God’s covenant with Abraham through the story of Moses and David and etc. Christianity offered gentiles both universality and timelessness. Since Jesus blessed mankind with the ultimate truth, there was really no more need for history or culture. But given the tribal nature of human community/culture, this caused problems, culminating in Catholics and Protestants ironically battling one another as the standard bearers of the true universal and timeless Church. Russian Orthodox Church took the opposite tact. It didn’t see itself as the Church for all humanity but for Russian people and culture on Russian soil. And given the stress on Russian history and nature, it became, in spirit, closer to Judaism and paganism than to the Christian Churches of the West.
In the Tarkovskian universe, there was good as opposed to evil, the high as opposed to low, but one couldn’t(or shouldn’t) neatly separate one from the other and hold it up as pure form or ideal. This view of Tarkovsky actually shaped all of his films. He objected to the antiseptic vision of Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY where seemingly pure technology existed in its own bubble. He thought it was all too neat. So, Tarkovsky intentionally created a messier world in SOLARIS, where the interiors of the space ship are strewn with debris and where the characters tend to be contentious and confused, as well as sweaty and unkempt. (The difference could also have been cultural. Russians have never been known for their love of order. There was a NOVA documentary comparing American air base with the Soviet/Russian one. The American ― or Anglo-American ― policy was to make the station as perfect as possible, e.g. the runaway was inspected for every pebble to be removed. The Soviet base, in contrast, was a mess, with grass and weeds growing all over, but then, Russians might have seen it as more ‘real’ and ‘organic’. And if the American fighter jets were designed and manufactured with surgical precision, Soviet jets were made comparatively cumbersome but powerful machines that were made to absorb all kinds of turbulence and problems.)
ANDREI RUBLEV is about as ‘impure’ as a spiritual work of art could possibly be. It presents a world of constant rain, mud, and fog. (Incidentally, Russian word for God is Bog.) Long stretches of time are idled away in boredom or confusion. Structures are damaged and falling apart from the forces of marauders, nature, and time. People are petty and cruel; violence and laughter co-exist too close for comfort. Tartar thugs raze an entire village, torment a girl, and laugh heartily. A comic, who a moment ago had people in stitches, is beaten to a pulp by authorities; later, he tries to take vengeance on Rublev(whom he wrongly suspects as the snitch), but just then, diverted by the crowd, pulls a comic stunt to rouse laughter from the mob. Tarkovsky’s vision of one of unwholesome wholeness where war and peace, joy and pain, Godly and sinful, and all other polarities ― and everything in between ― exist side by side and within the other. This rich alchemy is both disturbing and soothing. Disturbing because we, stained with the mud and blood of This world, can never achieve or hold the spiritual truth in its purity. But also soothing because we know sacredness is embedded in everything around us.
A similar sensibility can be discerned in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. Though not spiritual in theme, it is spiritual in the feel of the West as sacred memory. It offers a ‘found’ than a ‘filtered’ sensibility. Filtered sensibility has a way of simplifying, purifying, and/or formulating an essence about a certain conflict and the world in which it unfolds. Some traditional Westerns do offer a simplified settling of accounts between Good and Evil. Characters and things exist mainly as symbols, conventions, or stereotypes/archetypes. Many John Ford Westerns of the 1940s situated the audience in familiar territory, the so-called Ford territory. Though about the Wild West, the world Ford created became a kind of home away from home with its familiar sceneries, characters, narratives, and moral dynamics. It was the ‘Wild West’ than the actual Wild West. The West as it may have actually looked, felt, and sounded rarely came through most Westerns. What was presented was an idealized or archetypal portrait of the West faithful to the time-tested conventions of the genre, with almost everything and everyone in their place. It’s like those religious paintings where every element conforms to the set form and standard. As time passed, the Western became more and more filtered, not least because many of them depended on the same group of writers and the same/similar facades and props on studio backlots. Thus, the essence of the West came to be filtered through a set of iconic images.
Most Westerns were also directed by men who had no direct experience of the West and so were only familiar with the myths, which, as time passed, became more conventional.
Peckinpah was to Westerns what Coppola and Scorsese were to Italian-American gangster movies and what Tarkovsky was to films about Mother Russia. Peckinpah experienced the West firsthand given his lineage going back to the pioneers who settled the territory. Though the Old West was gone by the time Peckinpah was born, there were still some old-timers to tell stories; and though the land had been tamed and cleared of Indians and gunmen, there were still remnants of the Old West’s habits, lingo, ethos, and sentiments. So, the young Peckinpah was spiritually in touch with both the (fading but)real West and the mythology of the West(created by novels and movies). He loved the Western genre for keeping the reality alive as myth but also disdained many Western movies because they were far off the mark. (Many directors of Westerns were European Jewish emigres. Zinnemann’s HIGH NOON is a great movie but perhaps unfolds more like a morality tale/play than a story of the real West; everyone is a well-defined ― perhaps too well-defined ― character with something to say or symbolize than the sort of real person one might have bumped into in that time and place.) Peckinpah had a feel for the West that many Hollywood directors did not. He loved the mythology but also appreciated the reality of the West that was fading fast as a result of ‘growth’ and ‘progress’. One reason he loved Mexico was (much of)it still looked like the 19th century ― of course, we’re talking of the 1960s and early 1970s when Mexico was a very different place than it is today, though, even today, some parts of Mexico still seem to lag not by a few decades but centuries.
When reality fades, it is kept alive by memory, and memory has a way of sanctifying everything it touches. Thus, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is both very realistic and very ‘spiritual’(or ‘sacralized’). But this ‘spiritual’ quality is ‘found’ than ‘filtered’, i.e. Peckinpah recreated the West as it might have really looked, smelled, sounded, and felt. The mise-en-scene is richer than in most Westerns ― so rich in fact that you can inhale as well as see it. The details are amazing, not just in ‘lived in’ look of things but in their tone and texture. Much of the credit must go to the cinematographer John Coquillon who masterfully blended realism with painterly qualities. Some of the scenes are atypical for a Peckinpah film, unfolding more like a series of framed tableaus than action-drama. Many stills from the movie could be appreciated as photographic masterpieces.
One may object to the image-centrism(as opposed to the time-centrism) of the movie as too studied, preconceived, and self-conscious ― and it does get in the way of the narrative flow that is languorous to begin with ― , but the visual quality of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is its strongest suit. Coquillon found just the right balance between rough-hewn pungency and elegiac romanticism. As in ANDREI RUBLEV, we are confronted with a world of both danger and mystique. This tension between the West as an brutal land of corruption/outlawry and as a sacred turf of American ethos/mythos was conveyed with deeper emotions by Peckinpah than the audience was used to. These emotions formed a ‘spiritual’ sense than awareness, an acknowledgment that the Old West, while not a world of angels or even holy sinners, was something unique in history and of special value to American psychology and mythology. Similarly, war may be hell, a tragic event that turns men into killers than brothers, indeed even brothers killing brothers, but when it’s over, despite or especially because of its horrors and losses, its tragic dimensions become a part of a nation’s sacred memory, perhaps the most sacred of all. War brings out something in man, the worst but also the best. Wars are often justified in the name of some ‘sacred cause’, but the nature of war is essentially profane. War is sublime horror. Because of the ideals and the sufferings involved ― and the irreconcilable gulf between the ideal and the horror ― , wars are entered into the pantheon of sacred memory, even by those who opposed it. Consider how the Vietnam Memorial deeply moved both people on the Left and the Right. We feel a need to mythologize war since it’s too deep, dark, and complex for rational understanding, justification, or condemnation. Wars seem to be the most worthless, wasteful, futile, pointless, and irrational act of man on the one hand yet also the most essential, necessary, moral, and logical on the other. There is tragedy in the triumph and vice versa in war. Americans may disagree on many things, but all agree that WWII was the Good War, the necessary war against ‘radical evil’ that could only be destroyed by violence. And most Americans believe that the Civil War was necessary not only to defeat slavery in the South but as kind of spiritual atonement for the sin of slavery for the entire nation.
In a way, the story of the Wild West or Old West could be called the ‘Seventy Year War’ that pitted the White Man against the Red Man, the Lawman against the Outlaw, the adventurer against the settler, the rancher against the farmer, Established East against the Free West, and even North against the South(if we include the impact of the Civil War on the region, as can be evinced in the Jesse James legend). Paradoxically, though war itself may be the least spiritual enterprise embarked upon by man, no other endeavor or event has been ‘sacralized’ as much. Scientists and doctors perhaps did as much for humanity than generals and soldiers, but we have Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day but not Scientists’ Day or Doctors’ Day.
Perhaps, one of the appeals of the Western is it’s about the democratization of war. For most of civilized history ― or even tribal ‘history’ ― wars were led by rulers/chieftains who controlled most of the power and wealth while most people were recruited as faceless foot-soldiers or cannon fodder; even among primitive communities, one was part of the group and fought, killed, or died as part of the group. But the Western mythology often features a lone man with his own horse and gun defending his own freedom, property, honor, and dignity. He fights not because he’s an aristocrat or a faceless member of a group but because he lives for his own pride. Thus, he’s not fighting for some cause dictated by higher-ups nor surrendering his freedom to a higher authority but standing on his own two feet and ready to use his gun to war against any man, white or red, who would dare trample on his own freedom.
One ‘spiritualist’ misstep ― not least because it’s so blatant ― is the unwarranted and unconvincing attempt to portray Billy the Kid as a kind of saint-martyr or ‘crucified hero’, but this doesn’t even wash on its own terms. The fault wasn’t with Kris Kristofferson, who did the best he could ― though I suspect Peckinpah, simultaneously too sure(about Billy as martyr-hero) and too unsure(about Billy as a complicated character worthy of an art film) in regards to the true essence of Billy, left Kristofferson in the dark as to what his character was really supposed to be about ― but with the whole moral conception of the film.
While the film succeeds as a realization and ‘sacralization’ of the West in terms of look and feel, it fails in its blatant attempt to elevate Billy to something more than he is ― a good-looking and charismatic but useless hunk. In a good number of traditional Westerns, legendary outlaws were whitewashed and thus their deeds could be morally justified. So, Jesse and Frank James are the good guys in RETURN OF FRANK JAMES. Or, in the case of Walter Hill’s masterly THE LONG RIDERS, no attempt is made to morally justify the James/Younger Gang. They’re robbers and killers, but we admire them ― IF we admire them ― because they’re hard men who do what they want to, and that’s that. It’s a matter of ‘take it or leave it’. Amorality, if honest, has a certain integrity.
But Peckinpah tries to have it both ways with his Billy the Kid. On the one hand, Billy the Kid is presented as an essentially remorseless(and lazy) outlaw who carelessly kills or sacrifices other men ― even his cohorts ― to save his own hide; on the other hand, Peckinpah tries to convince us(and himself, which may explain why he drank so much since no sober mind can take the morality of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID seriously) rather unconvincingly that Billy the Kid is some kind of hero-saint-martyr. Peckinpah feeds us the realism of violence and amorality yet expects us to mourn the death of Billy as tragic, even spiritual. In THE WILD BUNCH, there was irony in how the outlaws could mistakenly be seen by Mexican villagers as heroes and how circumstances could ‘force’ the gang to take a ‘heroic’ stand(in a rather pointless fight that, if it did any good, was purely accidental). So, the concept of the ‘hero’ was in quotes in THE WILD BUNCH, raising interesting moral questions throughout the movie. PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID might have been a more provocative and engaging movie if Billy weren’t made to wear his hat like an halo, especially since there’s nothing he does in the movie that would indicate he’s a better man ― except in shooting people, drinking whiskey, and humping women. I think Peckinpah tripped into a fallacy where his nostalgia for lost manhood mistook manhood-for-manhood’s sake as a kind of morality. Billy may be said to possess some admirable qualities ― skill as gunman, courage in the face of death, charm with the ladies, camaraderie, and occasional soft spot for ‘little people’ like the Mexican sheepherder, etc. ― , but they don’t add up to a plate of beans in terms of moral virtue. It’s one thing to admire or mythologize a legendary figure for his special qualities, but it’s another thing to justify him morally for those qualities. For example, it’s one thing to admire an athlete for his prowess on the field or a rock star for his charisma, but it’s quite another to make them out to be holy heroes. Given the way of today’s celebrity culture, things have only gotten worse since the 1970s. In the 90s, blacks thought O.J. was really a hero ― even educated blacks at universities cheered and howled like baboons when O.J. beat the rap ― , and who can forget the media turning Magic Johnson into a hero because... he publicized his HIV infection. If today’s Americans think Oprah is god and Obama is messiah, then I suppose just about anyone can be a hero.
Pauline Kael, a friend of Peckinpah, was shown a preview of the film(along with Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks) and remarked it was missing a motor. She had a point though the film’s somber and static pace was intentional. PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID was conceived and executed by Peckinpah as an ‘Art Western’, as something between a holy coffin to be buried and a sacred raft/boat to drift down the river. It wasn’t meant to be another THE WILD BUNCH. However, the lack of vitality owes partly to the half-realized and half-hearted exploration of the conflict between Garrett and Billy. Billy is presented as a young outlaw with sexual prowess and the will to kill(whenever he feels necessary, which is too often). However, despite Billy’s knowledge that Garrett is coming after him, he seems resigned, even passive, to this ultimate fate. So, the virile outlaw does almost nothing to stand up to Garrett, but Peckinpah offers no real answer. (With Bishop in THE WILD BUNCH, we knew he dreaded the confrontation with Deke Thorton due to personal guilt. But how does one explain Billy’s soft spot for Garrett, a man who turned on his friends and sold himself out to the ‘Sante Fe Ring’? Is there a part of Billy that secretly wishes for a father figure? We don’t know because there’s precious little delving into their relationship. Part of the problem could have been due to the troubled and possibly incompatible collaboration between the tragically-minded Peckinpah and the hipster-oriented Rudy Wurlitzer, whose original script didn’t feature Garrett and Billy as friends and therefore lacked the tragic dimension of personal betrayal. Wurlitzer’s screenplay was described as ‘existentialist’, whereby the fatal intersection of the lives of Garrett and Billy would essentially be ‘accidental’. The two men don’t meet until the very end of the story. Thus, there was no need for an emotional dynamic between the older man and younger man. But Peckinpah wrote and added the opening scene of the film where Garrett comes to visit and warn his friend Billy and then, in the next scene, arrests him and locks him up in jail. Thus, Peckinpah established the troubled emotional bond between Garrett and Billy. But the rest of the film mostly follows Wurlitzer’s script that hardly dwells on the emotional relationship between the two men ― because Wurlitzer didn’t see it in those terms. Peckinpah tried to add heat to what was essentially a ‘cool’ idea that was originally intended for Monte Hellman, the director of an earlier Wurlitzer script TWO LANE BLACKTOP, which, though set in contemporary times, was closer to the spirit of Wurlitzer’s concept of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. There is no rule that says a story must opt for tragic fate over existential absurdity or vice versa, but, generally speaking, consistency is a virtue in art, which is why it usually doesn’t help to mix musical styles of highly different sensibilities ― Wagner doesn’t mix well with Philip Glass; Dostoevsky doesn’t mix well with Hunter Thompson. Peckinpah’s angst-filled tragicism didn’t mix well with Wurlitzer’s numb and alienated absurdism. Peckinpah tried to add feeling to a script whose purpose was to nullify ‘overwrought’ emotions as passe and old-fashioned. Wurlitzer was a young man harking back to and harping on old legends, and Peckinpah was an older man ― he always looked much older than his age ― reaching out to youth sensibility, but the two sensibilities were as ill-fated as the troubled ‘friendship’ between Garrett and Billy. Garrett and Billy eventually do end up in the same place, but Garrett kills Billy. Peckinpah and Wurlitzer likewise moved toward a common place ― the Western genre ― , but their encounter was as deadly in its own way as the one between Garrett and Billy. Like Garrett finally did what he felt necessary and killed Billy, Peckinpah did what he felt was necessary ― for reasons of his own interpretation and commercial demands ― and shot Wurlitzer’s idea. But just as Garrett didn’t kill Billy with enough conviction, Peckinpah didn’t sufficiently change Wurlitzer’s idea to make it really work on his own terms. This might make for an interesting film called SAM PECKINPAH & RUDY THE KID. It was as if Hemingway took Camus’s THE STRANGER and rewrote it by trying to flesh out the characters and storyline, by trying to make moral sense of what was originally amoral and absurdist. It was as if someone took a bebop tune and tried to popularize for Broadway. In a way, what Peckinpah did with PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID was like what Kurosawa did with Akutagawa’s short stories IN THE FOREST and RASHOMON. Kurosawa added extra elements to the story ― especially the framing device ― and tried to add moral and even circumstantial sense to the story at odds with the original intention of the author. Personally, I like much of what Kurosawa did with RASHOMON and what Peckinpah did with PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, but the problem is that, strangely enough, they did both too much and too little, i.e. they did too much to violate the meanings of the original material but not enough to make a better or different kind of sense in their new formulations.)
As for Garrett, he’s an aging gunman, sapped of energy he once had(though he’s still not someone to mess with)but in aggressive mode to hunt down Billy. So, the naturally aggressive Billy is passive before Garrett’s pursuit, whereas the enervated Garrett, who doesn’t want to hunt down Billy, feels compelled to be aggressive. In their relationship, Billy is like a hungry man who chooses to fast while Garrett is like a man without an appetite who must eat. This could have been stuff of interesting irony, but it’s just left sitting on the shelf to collect dust(like canned vegetables whose labels are read by Bob Dylan in the role of Alias). Thus, the conflict between Garrett and Billy, instead of becoming tormented and twisted(in other words, interesting), merely becomes neutralized. It’s as if neither character has free will, as if he chose to resign himself to fate. Garrett and Billy are not really doing anything. They are waiting for things to happen to them. Garrett feels dragged by the changing West to go shoot Billy who, like Jesus waiting for His death, just sits around for the day when he’s gonna be popped real good by his own Judas.
Of course, all characters in all fiction must ‘do’ as the authors ‘order’ them to, and the notion of ‘free will’ among characters is an illusion. Nevertheless, it’s interesting when the author enters the hearts/minds of his characters and feels/thinks through them, a kind of imagined ‘free will’ via empathy. Thus, even if the characters have ‘no choice’ but to ‘live’ and ‘act’ according to the plot, they’ve been ‘lived through’ and ‘realized as free individuals’ through the process of creation. THE WILD BUNCH’s greatness owes to its elements of ‘free will’ and ‘lived-ness’ and to its core conflict between fate/destiny and freedom/randomness. Though THE WILD BUNCH was construed(and ‘fated’) to end with a bang ― bloody gunfight as finale ― , there’s a sense throughout the movie that ‘anything can happen’. And the relationship between Pike Bishop and Deke Thorton is fraught with tension because we know neither wants to kill the other yet will do so if he must. And instead of one character being morally lionized over the other ― as Billy is against Garrett ― , THE WILD BUNCH presents two ‘traitors’ as friend-enemies. Bishop betrayed Thorton because his carelessness led to Thorton getting arrested while he himself got away. Thorton is a ‘traitor’ because he caved under torture and chose to work with the Law to track down and kill his former friends. (There’s a scene in THE WILD BUNCH where Thorton says to a gang of bounty hunters whom he leads that the Bunch are Real Men and ‘by God, I wish I was with them’; but he’s been forced to lead a bunch of ‘egg-sucking, chicken-stealing gutter trash’ ― the bounty hunters ― and just about had enough. In a way, the problem of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is that while Peckinpah did his best to pretend that Billy and his gang are something like Jesus and His Disciples ― the image in the final scene of dead Billy laid across a table surrounded by his men and his Madonna-like lover nails this point home ― , most of them come across as hardly better than the ‘egg-sucking and chicken-stealing’ ― or chicken-head-shooting, as the case may be ― bounty hunters in THE WILD BUNCH. As Thorton’s heart was really with the Bunch, it seems as though Peckinpah’s heart was really with the older characters ― even Chisum and the governor ― than with the young-guns-saints-of-the-West.) This element of double traitor-ship is at the core of MAJOR DUNDEE. Dundee and Tyreen(Richard Harris) are old friends who’ve become enemies. Both are traitors in their own way. Tyreen is a traitor for joining the Rebellion against the Union(in the Civil War). Dundee is a traitor for rebelling against his Southern roots and old friends and siding with the Union for careerism and some abstract principle. But if Dundee comes across morally more compromised than Tyreen, it’s because he dastardly wraps his actions in opportunism, egotism, or personal glory in the Flag of the Nation or the Law. Tyreen may be no saint, but he’s a man of personal and cultural code ― however outdated it may be in a fast-changing world, Tyreen is at least true to himself ― whereas Dundee tramples on even his personal convictions and conscience for the sake of personal ego and power except behind the mask of Law and Justice. Yet, Dundee isn’t a villain. Ironically, his vanity eventually becomes a kind of moral code, i.e. when push comes to shove, he will fight, kill, and face death for the honor of his vanity. He has turned vice into a virtue, and we end up admiring his resilience, determination, and courage against great odds. And even though Dundee and Tyreen have sworn to kill one another, it’s through the heat of battle against common enemies ― French troops in Mexico and Apache Indians ― that they become, at least in war, brothers under the sun. (The moral dyamic of MAJOR DUNDEE is surely one of the most complex and twisted in Westerns, so much so that many critics, even diehard Peckinpah fans, generally consider MAJOR DUNDEE a ‘great failure’, a work of genuine greatness that however bit off more than it could swallow. And indeed, there’s a lot more happening than is resolved ― especially since Peckinpah never had the chance to finish and assemble his preferred cut ― , but I think enough of the complexity registers and comes through for it to qualify as a great movie. The paradoxical thing about morality is it’s both hierarchical and egalitarian, both exclusive and universalist, both judgmental and forgiving. If all values and all deeds are the same, there can be no morality. Who is to say stealing is worse than paying for the item if morality were to deem all human feelings, thoughts, and actions as equal? To say stealing is wrong is to say certain behavior is superior to others. Similarly, it’s part of a moral hierarchy to say that telling the truth has higher value than telling lies. So, morality can never be equal in judging human behavior ― but in the name of ‘self-esteem’, we pretend that lots of crime/violence committed by blacks are either justified in the name of ‘social justice’ or, at worst, ‘misguided’. (If a ‘white Hispanic’ like George Zimmerman shoots a black thug who’s beating him into a pulp to defend himself, he is a ‘vile and racist murderer’. But if blacks don’t like a certain court ruling and riot and attack/rob/murder innocent people all over the city, we should try to ‘understand’ why such things happen. We mustn’t morally judge black behavior. Instead, we must seek what WE did wrong to make blacks so crazy and angry. If Jews as communists murder millions of Christian Slavs, we mustn’t blame Jews for the historical crime; but if Jews are murdered by Germans, we must blame all Germans for all eternity. When homosexuals went crazy and fuc*ed each other in the ass in the 80s and spread HIV all over and dropped like flies, we were told not only not to pass moral judgement on gays and gay behavior but to blame OURSELVES for not caring enough and doing enough to save those poor, poor saintly gay martyrs.) But higher morality must apply to all individuals with the same set of rules and in that sense it is universal. A morality that says a prince is right and a serf is wrong even when the prince did wrong while the serf did no wrong simply because the prince is more privileged than the serf is a not a valid kind of higher morality ― at least not to us. Thus, morality is the hierarchy of values applied equally to all men.
A fallacy enters into the moral equation when the hierarchy of values is confused with the hierarchy of classes ― a common mistake on the Right ― or when the equality under the law is confused with equality of moral values ― a common mistake on the Left. Thus, some rightists will defend monarchy and aristocracy as if highborn people are naturally more moral(or worthy of moral respect by the simple fact of their position), whereas some leftists will make excuses for all sorts of stupid ideas or crazy acts(especially if carried out be Negroes, Jews, and gays)as if they are of equal moral value. So, illegal aliens turn into ‘undocumented immigrants’. So, if Negroes run around and rob and steal, they are carrying out ‘social justice’ or ‘misguided’ in their ‘revolutionary’ fervor. Thus, it doesn’t matter what Jews do; they’re always right. If Jews do something good, all the credit goes to them, but if they do something bad, all the blame must be dumped on everyone else. As for gays, we are made to believe that ‘gay sex’ is the biological and moral equal of real sex, and that ‘gay marriage’ is as valid as real marriage. And we are told that gambling is the moral equivalent of real enterprise and that porn/prostitution is the ‘empowerment’ of women.
Thus, the lessons of Jesus Christ have been reduced by the Left to ‘anything goes’. According to the sickening Mulatto Obama, you’d think Jesus’s main message to mankind was “gays should be allowed to marry.” So, men who stick their penises into the fecal holes of other men are sexually decent, natural, and healthy, and they should be given special consideration and bestowed with the ‘rights’ of ‘same-sex marriage’, which makes about as much sense as playing tennis with both player on one side with none on the other. We might as well say imitation crab meat is real crab meat too. ‘Gay marriage’ is, at best, imitation marriage, but given what gay men do, it’s not even half-decent as an imitation. Just use Google Image for ‘gay sex’ and see for yourself what homosexuality is really about. It is something gross and putrid that should be tolerated at best, not something to be normalized and celebrated. The Left used to be for moral-values-applied-equally-to-all, which was a sound and indeed moral position, and this was why the Left had the moral upper-hand over the Right for most of the last two centuries. But now, the Left is inching toward the equality of moral values, which can only lead to the anarchy of values. Take ‘affirmative action’. Instead of making the laws ― rooted in moral values ― apply equally to whites and blacks, current laws now favor even lazy privileged blacks over poor industrious whites. Instead of leading blacks toward moral laws, moral laws are degraded to ‘help’ blacks. Instead of holding up moral laws as higher values that all people should aspire too, moral laws are now anything-the-left-wants-it-to-be in order to create a more ‘inclusive’ society, especially for fancy Jews and privileged gays. Thus, grades are lowered in schools, and the New Republic calls Kanye West “America’s Mozart.” And Classical Studies have been assaulted to push the notion that Ancient Egyptians were part of the African black race or that Greeks ‘stole’ everything from others. But the Cult of Equality is such that American conservatives dare not oppose the Left ― except sheepishly in some journals that few people read ― , and so the degradation of moral values continues, with the trivialization of political/social morality whereupon the most important moral issue of the day has become ‘gay marriage’. Jewish cabal on Wall Street rob us blind, the borders of the West are broken, Negroes run around to rob and rape, and moronic Christian Right wanna force Creationist idiocy in schools, BUT the main issue today is ‘gay marriage’. Pathetic indeed.
Morality can also be complicated or twisted because there can be morality in immorality and immorality in morality in various mixes, layers, and shades. This is clearly the case in MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH. Tyreen has a lot of positive virtues but he’s fighting for the Slave States. Dundee is fighting for the preservation of the Union that’s out to vanquish slavery, but his reasons are egotistical than political or moral. One can do the right thing for the wrong reasons and vice versa. Elia Kazan turned on his rotten communist friends but more out of cowardice ― he wanted to keep working in Hollywood, which ironically turned on him later for having chosen career over friends ― than out of ideals. If it weren’t for professional pressures, he would have not only kept mum about communists but kept working with them. Similarly, Garrett does the right thing for the wrong reasons when he goes after Billy and the gang. He guns down outlaws not to make a safer world for womenfolk and children but to carve out a privileged niche for himself in the new order. But just like Kazan ultimately paid the price for having betrayed his friends, the real-life Garrett became unpopular once word got around that he stabbed his ‘friend’ Billy in the back. According to the Wiki entry on Pat Garrett, he was never friends with Billy the Kid, but legends have way of taking on a life of their own. And even though the new order created by people like Garrett made the the West safer for ordinary people, many of those people came to lionize Billy the Kid over Pat Garrett. People are funny just like the law. Though the lives of common people are protected by sheriffs against outlaws, millions of Americans thrilled to BONNIE AND CLYDE. And though state troopers risk their lives on a daily basis to keep the roads safe for regular drivers, many Americans cheered and laughed when a state trooper was humiliated and tormented by two floozies and later by a dread-locked Negro in THELMA AND LOUISE. When a person’s house is burglarized, the first thing he or she does is call the cops, but then he or she watches a movie and laughs like a moron when ‘cool’ outlaws rob people and mow down cops.
Many good people support ‘gay marriage’ because of the morality-within-immorality syndrome. Some ― or perhaps even most ― moral values and positions are a mixture of ‘good’ and ‘bad’; they cannot satisfy all sides and cannot live up to every ideal. Universalism sounds nice in its embrace of all people, but universalism must also impose its values on all people, i.e. universalism must be intolerant of particularist differences that stand in the way of universalist world order. Tolerance has a positive side but can also allow lots of stupidity and worse. In Europe, the Cult of Tolerance has led to a Twiight Zone scenario. The ‘tolerant’ Left insists Europeans must be tolerant of Muslims, but Muslims don’t necessarily have to be as tolerant of non-Muslims. Thus, Tolerant UK gives protection to intolerant Muslims who want Sharia Law. The issue of ‘gay marriage’ is similarly confused because of its good and bad sides. To a lot of people, anything tagged with ‘equality’ sounds good, and so ‘marriage equality’ must be good. But if marriage can be just about anything, why not call anything ‘marriage’? Things have meaning because they are defined against other things. If we insist on absolute equality, then our vocabulary should be rid of all words ― or all words should have the same meaning ― since each word means one thing but not everything. ‘Day’ means day, not night. If we insist on absolute equality, ‘night’ should be part of ‘day’ too for the sake of definition-equality. ‘Marriage’ has meaning because it is THIS thing and not THAT thing. Like all other words/definitions, it cannot be everything, and its meaning(and values surrounding that meaning) must be upheld and defended for it not to be lost, diluted, or perverted. I can understand how people who support ‘gay marriage’ think they are supporting ‘inclusion’, ‘equality’, ‘fairness’, and other values sound good. But by pushing those ‘good’ things to excess, they are undermining another ― and indeed higher ― good that offers a morally and biologically meaningful definition of marriage, the most important and core unit of civilization. Marriage is what bridges biology with morality with history. People are created by man and woman ― a biological fact, not a mere lifestyle fantasy ― , and so it’s morally necessarily for the man and the woman who produce that life to take responsibility for the life that they create. I can understand why many modern people are turned off by this obvious fact. They are addicted to the nihilism of freedom, therefore the idea of being bound by biology and morality to any form of personal responsibility sounds like a bummer. But, society and history are driven by reality and actual forces, not fantasies. All people are the products of man and woman, and a healthy society cannot function unless the primary caretakers of most children are their real parents. Thus, the concept has great biological and moral meaning beyond any fashion, lifestyle trend, or legal charlatanism. To undermine something so fundamental and crucial for the sake of pleasing the gay lobby because it’s considered to be cool-hip-and-nice to be thought of as a ‘friend’ of the likes of Ellen Degeneris or Elton John is the height of foolishness, the sign of the both the radicalization and trivialization of human civilization in the throes of decadence. Also, such confused and trashy thinking affects other areas of thought; it’s like if you take to lying about one thing, you develop a habit of lying about other things; if you take to stealing from one place, you start stealing from other places. If ‘gay marriage’ is real marriage, then illegal aliens are real citizens, women are men and vice versa, a Negro is a white man and vice versa, a person’s worthless credit history is same as excellent credit history, an F on the test is same as an A, and etc.
Indeed, ours is a society whose economy went under due to the practice of offering easy credit to people with the worst possible credit records, whose colleges are failing due to grade inflation, and whose many states are facing severe budget crises due to hordes of illegal aliens have been welcomed as ersatz citizens(aka ‘undocumented immigrants’ according to the Jewish-controlled media) of a ‘proposition nation’. So, though I can understand the good intentions of those who support ‘gay marriage’ and though I can see some of the ‘good’ arguments for ‘gay marriage’, its ‘good’ things are of secondary nature to and, worse, subversive of the higher and truer good values/meanings that define real marriage. The concept of ‘marriage equality’ is the same as ‘grade equality’. We know smart/industrious kids get more A’s than dumb/lazy kids. So, in the name of ‘grade equality’, should we say F’s are the equal of A’s? Outwardly, we can make the F student seem like an A student by handing him honors and making him graduate, but a dummy is not the same as a genius, no more than fecal penetration between men is real sex between man and woman. There is ‘good’ things to be found in everything ― even in bad things ― , and bad things to be found in everything ― even in good things. But that doesn’t mean everything is of equal value. There were good things about Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and lots of bad things about Western democracies, but US, UK, and France were better nations overall than Nazi Germany and the USSR. One of the great moral failings of Pat Buchanan’s CHURCHILL AND HITLER AND THE UNNECESSARY WAR is he violates this very principle. Yes, Buchanan’s right that some of Hitler’s demands were rational and justified while his opponents ― even democratic ones ― could be wrong, pigheaded, and wicked in their own ways. But to speak of Hitler and Polish generals as moral equals ― actually Polish generals as worse! ― because neither side happened to be perfect is pure sophistry on Buchanan’s part. One could also say there are some ‘good’ things about Buchanan’s rejection of Darwinian evolution. Yes, one can find links between Darwinism and some of the radical secular horrors that took place in the 20th century, but there is the higher good of science and truth; and besides, Nazism was a twisted perversion of Darwinian principles than a true understanding and practice of Darwinism ― and besides, why is Buchanan disturbed by what the Nazis did ‘under the influence of Darwin’ when he wishes Nazis had prevailed in the East and wiped out tens of millions of subhuman Slavs? And though communism was officially committed to ‘scientific socialism’, the sort of science that prevailed under the likes of Stalin ― Lysenkoism for example ― had precious little to do with Darwin. If anything, the communism’s notion that all people were innately equal and possessed of souls that could be molded into anything had more in common with the Christian notion of saving-souls-around-the-world.
The character of Pat Garrett works in the movie as conceived by Rudy Wurlitzer(writer)and Peckinpah and as performed by James Coburn(in one of his finest roles), but the same cannot be said for Billy the Kid. The element of double-traitor-ship so crucial to MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH might have made PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID more interesting. Among mortals, Judas vs Judas makes for greater drama and irony than Judas vs Jesus, especially when no character happens to be a moral exemplar. In MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH, the main dynamic isn’t heroes vs villains but hero-AND-villain vs hero-AND-viallain, i.e. each character is both a hero and a villain. They live by their personal codes at odds with legal/moral codes, or vice versa. But the law and morality are a funny thing. At one point in THE WILD BUNCH, Pike Bishop tells Tector Gorch(Ben Jonson) that they must all stick together ― live by the code of honor among thieves ― or else they’re no better than animals. Yet, there are two sides of being like an animal. On one side are violence, destruction, brutishness, and savagery. But the other side of being like an animal is to be clear-headed and instinctively survivalist, as when Pike Bishop fled when lawmen came to arrest him and Thorton. At that moment, Bishop did what any animal would have done when faced with danger: save his own skin and hell with the rest. Though animalism is usually associated with chaos and craziness, animals in the wild are very ‘ordered’ or ‘system-ed’ in their emotions and behavior. They may act violent and appear ‘crazy’, but they are not acting like Rock n Rollers(who act crazy for the hell of it) but ‘rational’ and ‘purposeful’ in their own way. Wolves don’t fight and kill for the sake of being animal-like but because they must hunt to survive, kill to defend the turf, or flee from bigger foes. If a lone wolf sees a big grizzly charging at it, its animal nature kicks into gear and makes it run like a mothafuc*a. It is a ‘rational’ act. So, animals seem to be act wild and unruly, but there’s a ‘rationale’ to their fight-or-flight behavior. Morality is generally understood as a tool and means of bringing about social order and peace by rational understanding, and this is indeed true to a large degree. But morality can throw a monkey wrench into the ruthless ‘rational’ efficiency ― and even necessity ― of animal nature, thereby leading to even more violence and disorder in the name of some ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’ goal. The ‘animal nature’ of white people should warn them of the stronger, more aggressive, and uglier attributes of the Negro. If the white race is to survive, it must be in tune with its ‘rational’ animal instincts for self-preservation. White people should know that the greatest threats to their life and limb are Negro thugs and studs(who are tougher than whites) and Jewish weasels and sharks(who are smarter than whites). If white psychology were to reconnect with their ‘animal nature’, white folks would feel and think more in the ruthless terms of ‘fight or flight’ and do what is necessary for white survival and well-being. Thus being amoral, they would actually be acting more ‘rationally’ for the sake of racial and cultural survival. (Furthermore, one could argue that saving one’s people, culture, and race from one’s enemies is a moral value in and of itself, indeed the highest moral priority since without a people and culture, there can be no morality for a people to practice. This is why Jews have always been for survival-and-power FIRST and for morality SECOND. Though Jews make a lot of stink about morality, they are only hoodwinking white people to lower their own defenses so that Jews can increase Jewish power against whites in every way. ‘Equality’ and ‘diversity’ are not moral values for Jews but moral weapons to be used against whites. If US population were 85% Jewish, does anyone really think Jews would go out of their way to increase diversity to undermine Jewish numbers and power? No way. Why are Jews tribalist in Israel but pro-diversity in the West? Because as an anxious elite/hostile minority in the West, Jews have this fear of whites waking up and uniting against the hideous Jew. THAT is why Jews are trying to make every white woman have kids with black males; that is why Jews are for massive non-white immigration so as to use non-whites masses against the white masses in a divide-and-rule strategy.) Morality is necessary, but everything has its limits. As the Ecclesiastes said, there’s a time for everything. Time for peace, time for war, time to heal, time to kill, etc. Man must sometimes be man, man must sometimes strive to be Godly, man must sometimes act with ‘animal nature’. If Canaanites were coming to kill a tribe of Jews, it would have been stupid for Jews to just sit on their ass and pray to God. They would have had to pick up weapons and fight the enemies and kill them all if necessary. And when Gazans shot rockets into Israel, Zionists returned fire and killed or maimed thousands of Gazans ― with full support of Obama, the toyboy of Jews, and braindead American sheeple. Zionists acted with ruthlessly efficient and rational-survivalist ‘animal nature’ when they felt threatened despite all their highfaluting talk of commitment to ‘higher values’. ‘Animal nature’ can be amoral and brutal, but sometimes it cuts through the cultural BS and sees reality for what it is. Though seemingly ‘wild’ and ‘chaotic’, there is a ‘mathematical’ formula to ‘animal nature’ that may be missing in the muddle-headed idealism of cultural morality. If a bunch of Negro jigger-jivers are coming to destroy your community, the most sensible thing is to blow them away. Why? Do nothing = you die. Fight and defeat the Negroes = you win. It’s like there are certain mathematical principles of athletic chemistry that led to a winning season for the Oakland Athletics in MONEYBALL. There is a brutal ‘mathematical’ formula in ‘animal nature’. When a tiger faces off against a bear, it instinctively measures the odds and wonders if it should fight or take flight. Animals don’t just act crazy and wild ― even if they seem that way sometimes ― but are always ruthlessly sensing and measuring what they must to do to come out ahead. And those who make the wrong ‘calculation’ often get killed without mercy and weeded out in the ruthlessly ‘rational’ process of evolution. Thus, every animate creature has a natural calculator in its heart. Science, in this sense, is an extension of animal nature. If animals measure things with direct senses, science employs not only the senses but the higher sense called intellect possessed by humans due to their great capacity for memory, communication, and reason. But one thing ‘animal nature’ and science have in common is a ruthless commitment to ‘truth’. Neither has any use for bullshit, and indeed bullshit is fatal to both. Animals are natural technology created by the ‘science’ of nature to perform the fight/flight mechanism to the highest efficiency. Consider the snake, physically designed to recoil and strike suddenly. Disadvantaged by its lack of limbs, its form must be calibrated to function in the most secretive and sudden ways. A hyena that forsakes ‘animal nature’ and fools itself as the equal of a lion is gonna get killed, just like a white boy who thinks he can fight a Negro and win ― since ‘all races are equal’ according to the cultural morality of liberals ― is gonna get his ass whupped. Similarly, a nation using faulty or soft science to create weapons is going to lose to a nation using real science, or ruthless science. True science is ruthless in its search for truth. Science must kill falsehoods ― no matter how appealing they may be ― , or else, falsehoods will kill science. Why did Japan foolishly attack America in 1941? Instead of following the ruthless logic of ‘animal nature’, Japanese thought in spiritual-cultural terms of sacred Japan being able to hold off the barbarian attacks. Had it employed the ‘logic’ of ‘animal nature’, Japan would have realized it was no match for the US, just like a fox knows it makes no sense to fight a wolf. But cultural notions of ‘pride’, ‘honor’, and etc. made Japan take the leap into the abyss.
Thus, there’s a double-edged meaning to Bishop’s sermon to Tector Lyle. Yes, man must live by a code and not act like animals, but the cultural code of man can lead to even greater craziness, as when the Bunch take on Mapache and his 100+ Mexican soldiers for the sake of some moral code about ‘sticking together’. It was ‘animal nature’ that made Bishop save his own skin and leave Thorton to the authorities. By the law of ‘animal nature’, he did the right thing ― as also when he ruthlessly shot a wounded/blinded compatriot as the Bunch were riding out of Starbuck after the opening gun battle. But as a cultural creature with notions about friendship, loyalty, and ‘sticking together’, he’s morally tormented by his series of ‘betrayals’, especially of Thorton. (If he were a Jew or Negro, it probably wouldn’t have bothered his conscience much since Jews and Negroes don’t seem to have much use for individual conscience or honor. It’s no wonder that Anglos and Anglo-Americans eventually lost out to the alliance of Jews and Negroes that guilt-baited Anglo-American conscience while feeling no conscience of its own. And in a way, the Anglo-Americanization of all white Americans proved to be destructive to them as well in the long run. When Anglo-Americans were proud and powerful, it was an honor for any white American to become like an Anglo-American and partake of Anglo-American pride, glory, and dignity. But once Anglo-Americans began to lose pride and feel shame in their ‘white evil’, all the non-Anglo-American whites who’d been Anglo-Americanized fell under the same spell ― though their own ancestors hadn’t owned black slaves and had only arrived in America AFTER the ‘genocide’ of the Indians. Perhaps, just as we speak of ‘Hellenic’ and ‘Hellenistic’, i.e. Greek-culture and influenced-by-Greek-culture, we should speak of ‘Anglonic’ and ‘Anglonistic’. Anglonic- Americans were the first to establish and develop this country, but eventually almost all whites ― even from Eastern and Southern Europe ― became Anglonistic-Americans. Initially, this bought them pride, but eventually it brought them shame, as if they too must share in the ‘guilt’ of black slavery and all that. Of course, Jews played an instrumental role in the shift of what it meant to be Anglo-American. Jews often make the case that ALL American whites are guilty since they either directly or indirectly benefitted from black slavery. Even if your grandfather immigrated from Poland in the early 1900s, Jews say he could have pursued his ‘dream’ in America because America had been built with the sweat and blood of Negroes. But using this logic, American blacks owe even much more to white Americans of all stripes. After all, if it weren’t for whites who conquered this land, settled this land, established its laws and values, built the factories and worked long hours in them, invented all sorts of things, built railroads that provided jobs and travel to Negroes, and endless other things, where would American Negroes be today? Suppose no whites had ever come to America but space aliens transferred a million African Negroes on Pre-Columbian America. What would they have made of the continent? They would have just shaken their asses and fought endless tribal wars against Indians. So, a Polish-American factory worker who toiled long hours in American factories did far more for the damn Negroes than Negroes ever did for any white man. And whatever benefits whites may have gained from black labor during the slave era, all of it and much more has been given back and lost in just a few decades due to all the crime, problems, and madness caused by disgusting Negroes in all fifty states.) It is Bishop’s cultural code that allows him to rise above animalism, but the same cultural code also leads him to a fight he can’t win, a mad act of utter destruction. Even if we argue that brutal Mapache and his vile goons were killed in the mayhem, it’s a moral afterthought at best. Bishop and his men acted with reckless courage in the service of a moral code, but it unleashed greater violence and destruction than the simple laws of ‘animal nature’ would ever have. Similarly, had Japan, following its ‘animal survival instinct and calculations’, swallowed its pride in the 1940s and not attacked Pearl Harbor, it could have avoided a massive war with the US. But Japan acted out of cultural pride and wounded honor, and it made WWII even bigger and crazier. Of course, one could argue that hidden within the moral justification is an animal nature trying to get out, i.e. morality is often invoked to rationalize our animal nature of ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. Thus, one could argue that the Japanese ‘animal nature’ that miscalculated and wanted to fight ― and it must be admitted that ‘animal nature’ often makes faulty calculations as in the cases of hyenas taunting and getting too close to lions only to be mauled to death ― clung to moral or spiritual precepts to justify a rash action. And one could argue that much of politically correct morality is just a ‘flight’ response among white liberals. Since they are afraid of black threats, violence, and demands, they use the crutch of political correctness to silence and punish people who may be provoking black rage. White liberals appear to make a lot of noise about morality and justice, but they could be just acceding to blacks due to plain and simple ‘animal fear’.
Ideally, the cultural/moral man must be balanced with the animal/ruthless man, i.e. man must try to resolve problems through cultural ideals and rules to the best of his ability, but when such is out of reach against an intractable foe, the foe must be crushed like vermin. In America, the cancerous tumor of political correctness has grown to such size within the heart/mind of white folks that they’ve become disconnected to the blood source of ‘animal nature’. White folks are constantly sent mental signals by the politically correct tumor that they must find ‘moral’ ways of dealing with Negroes and Jews ― with all the blame and responsibility falling on the shoulders of whites ― and that they must never ever worry about their physical survival as a race or people. Of course, this soft attitude doesn’t apply to some peoples, especially Muslims and Chinese. If Muslims were to threaten us ― or threaten Israel ― , white Americans feel that they every right to use extreme violence to kill any number of ‘Muzzies’ to ‘preserve our way of life and our values’ or to ‘defend human rights’. And some Jews in America and their goyboy puppets are looking for a possible war with China lest it threaten US(or Jew-S) hegemony in the world. But white Americans are never ever supposed to have violent thoughts about or act violently toward Jews, Negroes, and Illegal Aliens(and gays) despite the fact that Jews are using their control of elite institutions to destroy the white race, Negroes are beating up and raping the white race, Illegal Aliens are invading this country and changing the very demographic character of this country, and gays are corrupting the culture of this country. Of course, Jews, Negroes, and Illegals themselves can and do act on the basis of ‘animal nature’, i.e. for their survival and supremacy at the expense of white Americans, but white Americans are supposed to be in constant ‘moral mode’ ― rooted in self-shame and responsibility toward others ― when it comes to hideous Jews, disgusting Negroes, and unsavory Illegals.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID might have been more interesting, psychologically as well as dramatically, if Billy had been developed more as a character instead of having him strut around like a walking, talking, and love-making symbol of lost freedom. The film looks and feels too rugged and authentic for that kind of overt iconography. (The dichotomy between Garrett and Billy is less about two men than about a man and a symbol, and so it feels as though Garrett, a three dimensional character, is up against a two dimensional WANTED poster of Billy the Kid, i.e. Garrett both wants to kill Billy and wants to be Billy, in a way he wants to kill Billy because he wants to be Billy, an impossibility due to his age, nature, and circumstances. The notion of man vs symbol generally makes for less drama than man vs man, but it can be made interesting if handled with keener insight than what’s availed in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. The problem is Peckinpah couldn’t decide what to make of Billy, i.e. to present him as an anti-hero or a hero. Eventually, he opted more for ‘hero’ ― a fatal mistake in my opinion ― , but a certain ambivalence lingers nevertheless, which, however, goes neglected than is addressed. It feels as though the film has something more to say, but we aren’t sure what it is exactly. Another problem is Garrett seems to go up against a legend before it became a legend. Billy the Kid became one of the great folk-heroes of the Wild West, but that was after he died. Like most films about Jesus, PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID seems to retroactively place the legend in a time and place where he was yet to be a legend. To be sure, Billy was a notorious and news-worthy character even in his all-too-brief life, which is why so much was made of his death. But when he was alive, he was as dreaded as admired ― more dreaded in fact. And Garrett was considered a hero for having killed a ruthless outlaw. It was only later that a new myth developed about Garrett having been a friend of Billy, who was remade into a kind of Robin Hood figure, and about how Garrett acted like Judas by killing his friend for thirty pieces of silver. Peckinpah’s purpose seems contradictory. His insistence on authenticity in recreating the Old West would suggest an interest in the real Garrett and real Billy before they became part of some legend, and yet, his portrayal of Billy and Garrett as Jesus and Judas is right out of the hoary legend. This makes for a schizoid feeling throughout the movie.
There was some of this in THE WILD BUNCH too, indicated in the opening scene where live action scenes in color are inter-cut with still starkly grainy b/w images ― like in old newspapers. It was as if Peckinpah was saying it was his own ‘truth’ cut and pasted from the creative space between past and present, between fact and legend, between realism and fantasy, between reverence and revision. Thus, the schizoid aspect of THE WILD BUNCH was turned into an advantage, making the feel of the movie RASHOMON-like, rife with uncertainty and tension. PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID has the same ‘problem’, but it’s swept under the rug; the question mark is turned into a period, the provocative is simplified to merely evocative. Though the historical Billy is still shrouded in mystery, it does appear that he was well-aware of his notoriety and fame. He had yet to become the legend he would become some years after his death, but he reveled in the attention as a kind of frontier celebrity. The Billy of Peckinpah’s film seems oblivious, as if indifferent to what the world cares about him. He is different from the neurotic Billy of Penn’s LEFT-HANDED GUN who, an insensitive outlaw, becomes all too sensitively aware of his notoriety and fame. As something between James Dean in THE REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and Peter O’Toole in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, his nerves become frayed upon the dawning realization that he can’t live up to expectations. Thus, LEFT-HANDED GUN could be called WILLIAM BONNEY & BILLY THE KID. It’s about a man at war with his own image, the thing that both made him and unmade him. The Billy of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID may be psychotic in his penchant for cold-blooded killing, but there isn’t a hint of neurosis or anxiety-stress about being haunted by his fame that is growing into a legend. Because this Billy is so comfortable and untroubled in his own skin ― even when locked up in chains and about to be hanged ― , there isn’t much in the way of tension, the heart of drama, whenever Billy commands the screen. He beams as a shining symbol, and yet, something feels wrong. He’s like the sun god in a world of dirt and clay, an Apollo satisfied with cheap whores and shitting tortillas and chili peppers.)
Kris Kristofferson looks good ― though a bit chubby ― and has natural presence as an actor, but he smiles too much. The ‘rock star’ aspect of his performance seems anachronistic in the context of a West brought back to life with such fine attention to detail. To be sure, the ‘rock star’ personality surely existed before there were ‘rock stars’, and supposedly the real Billy was known for his famous smile. Mussolini certainly had a rock star personality. But Billy exhibits too much of the singer-songwriter persona that came to define the early 70s. Also, everything happens too easily for him ― even his death ― , and so his attitude to life comes across as not only casual but flippant. Though religious lunatic Ollinger(R.G. Armstrong) is repulsive, we are almost grateful when he knocks Billy down and sticks a shotgun to his chest, if only to wipe off the self-satisfied smile off his face. It is one of the few times in the movie when Billy seems to be up against something real and can’t slip away with a song-and-dance. (The scene with Ollinger at the upper floor of the jail house is one of the most memorable. It begins by establishing Ollinger sitting in a corner at the opposite end of the room from sheriff Garrett, deputy Bell, and prisoner Billy who are playing a game of poker. Ollinger introduces another kind of division in society, perhaps something more profound that one between the Law and the outlaw. Though divided by the Law, Garett and Bell seem to get along with Billy; they share, more or less, the same enthusiasm for drink, poker, and camaraderie. If not for their dependence on the Law as a livelihood, Garrett and Bell might even socialize with someone like Billy. But the gulf between Billy and Ollinger is wider and deeper; it’s about the Soul. The divide is as real as the one between Old Testament Prophets and Jesus of the New Testament. Ollinger is of the angry judgmental God whereas Billy is supposed to be christ of the West to be ‘martyred’ for his freedom. But from a psychological angle, Ollinger’s religiosity may be a crutch, a way of dealing with his repressed self-loathing. The reason for the physical distance between Ollinger and the three men in the room may be social as well as spiritual. At one point, Billy remarks that Ollinger smells like ‘street shit’. It could have been just a casual insult but then maybe not. In Norman Mailer’s THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST ― of which I finished only the first third as it got pretty dreary despite the brilliant writing ― , boy Hitler is portrayed of having bad smells. Hitler was later known to have been obsessive about proper diet and hygiene to maintain his cleanliness and health ― , and indeed antiseptic hygienics in terms of art, social order, and race comprised the core body of Nazi ideology. Ironically, he ended his life in a bunker filled with vomit, urine, feces, and foul odor. Though Hitler’s life is understood in terms of his conscious ideology, maybe Mailer was onto something when he noted the Pig-Pen-ish nature of boy Hitler. Though I never read anything about Hitler’s smell as boy or man in any historical record or book ― and Mailer could have made it up in the spirit of artistic license ― , it’s a tantalizing idea that Hitler’s sense of the ‘sacred’ and ‘spiritual’ ― clean holy race of Aryans ― may actually have derived from his self-loathing as Pig-Pen-ish stinker. Just as Ollinger sits apart from others, Hitler was known for his awkward and distant sociability; during the First World War, he mostly kept to himself and remained aloof from other soldiers in the bunkers. And even he became the leader of Germany, he had few personal friends and kept a distance from most people. Mailer was someone who liked to get to the psycho-physicality of things, as when he discussed Marilyn Monroe in Hitlerian terms, i.e. the blonde shikse whore turned on grubby and ugly Jewish men to dream of squirting their jism all over the ‘Aryan’ goddesses. Like Philip Roth with PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT and Shohei Imamura with his films about the ‘lower half of Japanese society and lower half of the human body’, Mailer believed that the truth wasn’t to be find in the mental realm alone. Rather, the mind, perhaps especially the male mind, was constantly directed by the compass or cumpass of the penis. When a man saw a gorgeous woman, his pud went boing and pointed her way, and the man’s thoughts were obsessed with the ho. Hitler may have been straight or a closet gay, but he had an eye for beauty ― even if it tended to be rather conventional and ‘bourgeois’. Anyway, if Hitler did indeed loathe himself for his own smells, real or imaginary, a strange complex might have developed that explains his radical purism. He wanted to touch and embrace the thing that would have found him repulsive, the thing that his touch would have befouled. Since he couldn’t hold it physically, he might have idealized it into a kind of spiritual essence. Similarly, the ugly Himmler and J. Edgar Hoover may have been especially fond of beauty ― they had a penchant for selecting tall, good-looking, and clean-looking young males ― because they themselves were so ugly. They idealized and institutionalized what they couldn’t be or have. If some ugly people want to destroy beauty out of envy and resentment ― the case with most Jews and maybe Chinese too ― , some ugly people wanna uphold beauty as something to worship. Since they cannot hold what they want to ― because they themselves are ugly or rejected by beauty ― , the only way they can own beauty is as a religion or an ideology. Thus, even though Himmler was one ugly guy, he could rule over an institution that promoted beauty as the national cult for all ‘Aryans’. Similarly, lots of gay men are obsessed with femininity and feminine beauty because they can never be women themselves. Since they can’t be women, they’ve idealized feminine beauty into a kind of art and fashion play. And this may also explain the cult of the Magic Negro and Afro-Aryan superhero. Since dorky, dweeby, and bland whites cannot possess the kind of soulfulness and magnetism of ‘charismatic’ and virile Negroes, they have idealized/spiritualized the Negro into some kind of perfect being, both out of fear and admiration. Black powerfulness both frightens and fascinates the white-bread white folks. They find it awesome in a badass cool way but also scary in its hammer-fisted howling animalism. Since whites have a difficult time dealing with the reality of blackness, they’ve turned it into an icon to worship. Paradoxically, we’ve created gods to rule over us because gods are easier to control than reality. God and gods are supposed to have power over man, but we can shape and steer God and gods to our liking whereas we cannot do the same with real things in the real world. A white liberal can control the Magic Negro icon/image, but he cannot control some jiveass black punk in the street. Oprah, as a Magic Negress, had to pander to white hopes and dreams in order to be successful whereas black bitches in the street don’t give a shit what some ‘honkey-ass mothafuc*az’ be thinking. Oprah, as rich and powerful as she may be, has had to conform to the liberal white imagination of the nice nurturing neo-mammy. Anyway, Hitler’s near-spiritual mania for order, cleanliness, and purity may have ironically risen from his own sense of filth, not only from his own sense of dirtiness but from the poverty and grime while he was a bohemian bum living in flop-houses in the lower-depths of Viennese society. If some people make peace with the foulness, Hitler never could, and if Mailer was right about Hitler’s sense of feeling dirty/smelly, Hitler may have cringed from the filth around him precisely and ironically because he felt so dirty himself. If you feel clean but surrounded by foulness, you can at least feel clean inside and see foulness as something outside of yourself. But if you feel dirty on the inside, the foulness around you becomes like an extension of yourself. I’ve no idea what boy Hitler may have been really like, but I wonder if Mailer was projecting his own Jewish complexes onto Hitler, not least because few peoples have been as neurotic about the nature of filth/cleanliness and purity/impurity as the Jews. Jewish religion has been obsessive about cleanliness of all kinds. The terms ‘goy’ and ‘shikse’ describe non-Jews as filthy and foul. Traditionally, Jews wouldn’t even share bagels ― ‘break bread’ ― with goyim. Yet, what with their heavy clothing in hot weather and hairiness, Jews couldn’t have been very clean. Also, even if Jews were scrubbed clean, many of them still looked foul with their exaggerated hook noses, curly hair, and rubbery lips. Also, because Jews were limited to the ghettos and/or had to move from place to place, they often had to live like rats, which undermined their mania for hygiene and cleanliness. So, one wonder if Hitler of Mailer’s book is a Jewified personage, i.e. Mailer sought to understand Hitler by projecting onto him all the neurotic baggage of the Jews themselves. But then, this would have been nothing new since Jews have long projected their own paranoia onto American Wasps and claimed that white Americans, especially those opposed to communism, were suffering from some kind of paranoid delusion. Jews see Nazis everywhere but say white gentiles see communists everywhere. But despite men like Joseph McCarthy, whites were never as neurotic, paranoid, and extreme as Jews have been. Given our nature, we don’t like stinky stuff, which is why most TV shows and movies look very ‘neat’ and ‘clean’. TRANSFORMERS may have lots of violence and explosions, but it’s all formula. Even most blood in action movies are part of the prop or soda prop than ugly reminder of reality. Even most gory horror movies are ‘clean’ in the following sense: the graphic gross-out stuff
functions within the ‘neat’ conventions of the genre than lend any true sense of reality. Such neat-and-cleanliness poses a problem for artists who are committed to reveal the truth, and truth is as physical as psychological, and indeed the two have sometimes been linked, most notably in the works of David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Since Hollywood has always been in it for money, its purpose was to give people a neat-and-clean image of the world. Most classic Hollywood war movies didn’t show much in the way of blood and gore of actual combat. Characters didn’t use bad words. And in Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger Westerns, the heroes usually shot the bad guys in the wrists or hands. And GONE WITH THE WIND looks too post-card picture perfect to depict war as any believable horror. Same goes for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Even when Zhivago is bedraggled and worn out, there’s something photogenic about him; even when people are cleaning night-soil from the train, there’s an air of Hollywood epic about it. I love the movie but I’m just saying. Even their realistic details don’t seem or feel real. In contrast are works such as SIBERIADE and WHEN FATHER WENT AWAY ON BUSINESS where nature really feels like nature, where grime really feels like grime, where ugliness is really ugly, where the stinky strikes our nostrils as really stinky. It’s like there was real country/folk music with the whiff of hay and manure, and then there was the Eagles, who were good but ‘clean and neat’. It was in the late 60s and early 70s that certain American film ‘auteurs’ were given the opportunity to ditch the ‘neat and clean’ formula and convey truth in all its guises, psychological and physical. And so, there was an air of scatological-ness to some of the films of this era, and this sensibility even came to define Hollywood products like THE FRENCH CONNECTION and ROCKY. Think of the vomiting scene in Cassavetes’ HUSBANDS, or when one of the guys wipes his fingers on his tongue and puts it under Peter Falk’s nose. Or consider the stinkiness of MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER where we can almost smell the musty town and the soiled whores. Or consider THE EASY RIDER and WOODSTOCK. This stinkiness was acknowledged and even welcomed as the smell of truth, of earth and sweat. THX 1138, the first film by George Lucas, has a character escaping from the antiseptic underworld of ultra-technology toward a more human existence in the world above ground. LAST TANGO IN PARIS, an art-house hit, had Brando revealing a lot ― perhaps too much ― of himself. We can almost smell the butter and feces as he orders a young woman to grease her fingers and shove it up his ass. We can almost smell the decaying fumes of his dead wife. And for awhile, it seemed as if the authenticity of stinkery was here to stay as the new mode of truth. But a new sensibility arose from the mid 70s with the rise of Spielberg and then Lucas, and it culminated in the new neat-and-clean airbrushed look and deodorized aura of the 80s. In Rock music, Springsteen, who’d looked sweaty and grubby in the 70s, looked like he walked out of the shower in the 80s. And leftist politics went from cultural passion to political correctness. Compare gay icons of the early 70s to Rachel Maddow today. And in music, the most popular ‘instrument’ became the synthesizer, which, especially via digital technology, produces ‘pure’ clean sounds. And people prefer the nature in Cameron’s AVATAR to real nature of the woods ― or real-seeming nature in a movie like THE 13TH WARRIOR. And increasing number of Japanese prefer computer-created idol-singers to real ones, and Japanese animation has been drawing larger audiences than live-action movies. In the end, despite the promise of a new dawn of Art-and-Truth in the early 70s, advertising won over art in popular culture. To be sure, we still have stinkeroons in the figures of Todd Solondz or Kevin Smith, but they’ve succumbed to a fallacy or folly. Some filmmakers fallaciously confuse ‘more filth’ as ‘more truth’. If the great Emir Kusterica gave us soil with the soul, Solondz confuses the soiled-ness with the truth. In Cassavetes’ HUSBANDS men drink too much and throw up, giving us a whiff of the real world; it feels true. In contrast, Solondz is like a kid who pulls a booger out of his nose and holds it up as some great truth by rubbing it on other people. Instead of filth and loathing as a part of truth, it’s hyped as the very essence of truth. As for idiots like Kevin Smith, their gratuitous wallowing in filth is on the level of Jerry Springer, a cheap and easy way to get a response from the audience. But things were different with the new crop of film artists who gained an unprecedented measure of creative/expressive freedom and support in the late 60s and early 70s. At their best, they wanted to show more of reality ― the dirt, grime, sweat, piss, and puss ― to express more truth since the real world wasn’t ‘neat and clean’ like in the movies. This meant more frankness in terms of sexuality, language, violence, bodily functions, texture and mood. Perhaps this sensibility inadvertently fell into self-parody with THE EXORCIST where the torrents of vomit and feces that flung out of demon-possessed Regan’s mouth offered not so much truth as a new kind of crowd-pleasing gimmick. Anyway, Peckinpah was one of those filmmakers striving for more truth, indeed evident from his earliest movies. Peckinpah once said of SHANE, his choice of the best Western, that it featured the first real killing ― when the Jack Palance character shot dead a runty sodbuster. Killings had been common in Westerns, but Peckinpah saw something new in that particular scene in SHANE. The victim didn’t die a movie death but a real death. It was sudden, brutal, and pointless. It looked like an act of real-life murder. It wasn’t neat death or dramatized death but death-death as the character collapsed onto a pool of mud. Because of his roots in the West and the new sensibility of the 50s ― influenced by European and Japanese cinema ― , Peckinpah didn’t want to be another John Ford or Howard Hawks. He wanted to do with the Western what Akira Kurosawa did with samurai films and what Bergman did with medieval tales in VIRGIN SPRING and THE SEVENTH SEAL. He wanted to approach the West from the vantage point of the personal artist than a Hollywood movie director. And this was already evident in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, which, while following in the footsteps of the traditional Western, served up a different kind of stew. Instead of the good old meat and potatoes, it had the gamey flavor of meat of wild animals and crunchy texture of fresh than canned vegetables. Peckinpah presented the seedy and perverse sides of the Western experience with a certain familiarity, even affection, as if, good or bad, moral or immoral, it was an integral part of his makeup. In THE WILD BUNCH, Angel says of his community that it’s “my people, my village”. Angel sheds blood outside the village as a bandit, but he shares blood within the village as a son and brother. As far as he’s concerned, banditry is just a job to make some money, not the source of his true identity, which is to be found only within the village and with his own people. Angel is utterly unapologetic about his ties to his own people. Ironically, Peckinpah may have felt close to Mexicans ― a people outside his own tribe ― because they had such strong sense of community and identity. As Angel was unapologetic about his loyalty to his village, Peckinpah made no apologies for his romantic fixation on the Old West, which was his ‘village’. In a way, the answer as to why Mexicans are gaining and Anglo-Americans are losing in the SW can be found in THE WILD BUNCH. Angel rides with the Bunch, but he’s a good homeboy hombre at heart. He even sacrifices his share of the gold to funnel some guns to his own people. Pike Bishop, on the other hand, is less emotional and more rational in his assessment of the world and his role within it. He says, “10,000 in gold cuts an awful lot of family ties.” He tells a German officer that he doesn’t share the ‘naive sentiments’ of his country; he even works with Mapache to rob an American military transport. In a way, Pike is like so many American Wasp enterprisers who will buy-and-sell anything for profit and material advantage. Even Mexican-Americans in America feel more Mexican than American and remain true to their ‘village’ ― even if only as an idea ― , whereas so many uprooted Anglo-Americans will even sell their own country for an extra buck. Paradoxically, the very quality that once made Anglo-Americans prevail over Mexicans is now working in favor of Mexicans. Anglo-Americans were able to wrest the Southwest territories from Mexico because they were a people on the move without much sense of rootedness. Northern Europeans left the Old World, and many of them kept moving and moving westward, looking for new opportunities for wealth and power. A dynamic people, they accomplished so much more than the ultra-conservative Mexicans, most of whom were content to live their entire lives in their villages. But if Anglo-Americans in the past balanced rootless adventurism with racial patriotism ― and also bred a lot and produced many white kids ― , the new breed no longer has much in the way of racial pride or identity due to rise of political correctness and anti-white ‘anti-racism’. They are now the Mild Bunch. As for Mexicans, even though they are still psycho-culturally defined by the ‘my village mentality’, they’ve been on move, with millions legally and illegally entering into the U.S. When Anglo-Americans move to a new place, it becomes their new identity; when Mexicans leave the village to a new place, the village still remains their heart and soul, even if preserved in the form of a La Raza slogan. So, even in America, Mexicans think like Angel:
“my people and my village”. And this form of primitive nationalism is even encouraged by American multi-culturalism controlled by Jews whose main objective is to bring down White America. And yet, the great thing about THE WILD BUNCH was Peckinpah and Walon Green’s ― the screenwriter ― understanding of the unpredictability of human psychology: whatever it is that you may live for, it may not be what you die for. Angel, the passionate village-nationalist, chooses in the end to die for the Bunch. When apprehended and tortured by Mapache, he keep his mouth shut to spare the Bunch who, perhaps to his surprise, has become like his family. There’s a moment when Angel stares into Bishop’s eyes and says, “I go with you, Jefe.” Especially with his own father killed by Mapache and his own woman stolen by Mapache, Angel may feel closer to the Bunch than even before. And when he realizes that his woman WILLINGLY went with Mapache and that so many Mexicans happily rob other Mexicans, he may have gradually come to feel more at home with the Bunch. But Angel isn’t the only one who is transformed. It happens with Pike, Dutch, and the Gorches too. Though hard men who are supposed to care only about money, to their own surprise they find themselves going into battle to save one of the gang. Honor among thieves morphs into honor among brothers. Anyway, in Peckinpah’s world there was less of a clear distinction between the good and the bad, between the respectable and the low, between the sympathetic and the villainous. Indeed, the villains of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, the Hammond brothers, may be rough and barbaric, but they aren’t evil. In their own ridiculous way, they are fighting for what they believe to be their rights and honor. So, why did RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY seem more scandalous than most Westerns? The devil was in the details and in the psychology. For example, Peckinpah showed the world of prostitution with greater frankness than previously attempted in most Westerns. His dramatization of sexuality, physical and psychological, had a bluntness and honesty ― closer to Bergman’s in THE VIRGIN SPRING and presaging the rape scene in STRAW DOGS ― that challenged and upended the conventions of the time. It was a time when Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA was considered pretty risque. What really made the difference, however, was that Peckinpah presented sexuality as sexuality, without the salaciousness and sensationalism. Generally, Americans were used to ‘puritanism’ on one side and prostitution-ism on the other side. There had been many very sexy movies before RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY. King Vidor’s DUEL IN THE SUN was a sizzling movie. And there was Marilyn Monroe doing her thing in the 50s. And Howard Hughes had already pulled the buxom-breast stunt with THE OUTLAW. Whatever controversies such movies stirred up, they still played by the rules that HERE ON THIS SIDE was safe stuff for the whole family and THERE ON THAT SIDE was sexy stuff for adults and maybe disreputable folks. Marilyn Monroe’s sexiness never seemed natural, never like something of the world of real people. It seemed to exist in its own bubble, and this is what made it acceptable to most Americans. Similarly, the crime in THE GODFATHER is more comforting than the one in GOODFELLAS because it feels mythically removed from real America whereas in the Scorsese film the hoodlums are living in the same neighborhoods as us, eating in the same restaurants, listening to the same music, etc. Indeed, the girl-next-door babysitter hired by Henry Hill could be someone we know. In the traditional Western, there was the old cliche of the Hooker with a Heart of Gold, but upon closer inspection, it too played on the neat division between the safe and the sexy. Take one such character in John Ford’s STAGECOACH. We learn that the woman is a prostitute by trade but not by pride and actually wants to be redeemed
in life by a man who will love her and save her. It’s a variation of the Mary Magdalene story, one of a prostitute by circumstances who would gladly put away obscene things if only a man would come and save her. The variation of the hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold can be found in THE SEARCHERS as well. Debbie ― played by Natalie Wood ― has been abducted and raised by Indians and was even forced to have sex with an Indian brave. She’s been defiled but AGAINST her will. Though she tells Ethan and Marty that she now belongs to the Indian folks, deep in her heart she wants to be saved, and this is evident when Marty kills the Indian chief Scar to rescue her. She hugs him in gratitude. She was forced to become a ‘hooker’ by circumstances, and even though her vagina has been penetrated by the Red Man’s savage pud, she’s maintained a pure heart of gold. And it is the gleam of this heart that finally makes Ethan ― played by John Wayne ― spare her. But if she had spat in his eye and said, “Let me go, you racist creep, I wanna go fuc* more braves who are allegorical stand-ins for ‘niggers’”, you can bet he would have plugged her right there and then ― and it would have been a good thing too. Maybe this is why Peckinpah thought THE SEARCHERS was one of Ford’s worst movies. He didn’t find the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold variation in Debbie very convincing. Maybe he found it too neat that after all she’d been through, she was still a good clean girl at heart. Peckinpah believed that even the ‘cleanest’ girls had something of the whore in them, a kind of hooker with a fart of old. The dichotomy of GOOD GIRLS on one side and BAD GIRLS on the other was a myth, no more and no less than the division of morality into goody-good and baddy-bad; Peckinpah saw the world in terms of bad-good vs good-bad. In a way, Paul Schrader was channeling both Ford and Peckinpah when he made HARDCORE, where a father goes searching for his girl ― like the two men in THE SEARCHERS go looking for Debbie ― , only to discover at the end that the girl actually had run away because she wanted some fun in life. And prior to that film, Schrader wrote TAXI DRIVER where the twelve year old Iris ― played by Jodie Foster ― seems actually comfortable with her lot in life. Anyway, what was troubling about the sexuality in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY was Peckinpah dispensed with the dichotomy between the safe and the sexy. Instead of safe stuff over here and sexy stuff over there, the stuff of sex was all over the movie, from the repressed and possibly incestuous feelings for his daughter on the part of the R.G. Armstrong character ― same actor who played Ollinger ― to the horny rages of the Hammond brothers. The girl played by Mariette Hartley is naive but not so innocent. She likes boys but doesn’t fully understand the sexual nature of men, especially those unschooled in civilized ways. Peckinpah also presented hookers as real folks than as ‘those’ women. Some critics have accused Peckinpah of seeing every woman as a hooker, but it could also be said he saw every hooker as a woman, a human being. In the Peckinpah universe, there's no clear division between the pure and the profane. Like the grounds of the mining village, all of mankind and womankind were a mixture of dirt and gold, with more of the former than the latter. Peckinpah believed in this as the truth, or at least truer than the image of the West presented by most Westerns up to that time. It is for this reason that the Hammond brothers, loathsome as they are, are not exactly hateful. Though we root for the older and ‘neater’ men against the grimy and cootie-ish Hammonds, it’s the latter who come to embody Peckinpah's fuller vision realized in later Westerns. Though the old heroes are certainly more photogenic and admirable, the Hammonds are more real and authentic. They rate high on the stinkery scale. One of them, played by Warren Oates, even refuses to take a bath and is forced into the tub by his brothers. In a way, this insistence on not bathing by the stinky Hammond brother ― later reiterated by a German soldier in THE CROSS OF IRON who claims that not bathing makes him waterproof ― is a perfect metaphor for Peckinpah’s attitude toward Hollywood. Peckinpah refused to be scrubbed clean to be made more palatable. His idea was, “this is my smell, good or bad, like it or not, this is how I smell.” In a way, Peckinpah was pulling his own version of Michael Novak’s RISE OF THE UNMELTABLE ETHNICS. Novak had argued that white ethnics all had their unique odors and refused to conform to the wasp mania for odorless order. The implications were both leftist and rightist. Leftist in resisting the attempt by America’s then Wasp elite to wash, clean, and dress everyone in the ideal Wasp image; Rightist in resisting the then mostly liberal Wasp’s effort to turn all Americans into good clean-minded ‘progressives’ committed to fighting for do-goody ‘equality’. The way many ethnics saw it, programs like forced busing of school children was endangering their own kids by putting them together with dangerous black kids. And affluent and sanctimonious holier-than-thou liberal wasps who lived in their lily-white communities seemed like a bunch of priggish a**holes to white ethnics who had to the bear the brunt of stuff like ‘forced school busing’. Anyway, the wasp mania for odorless order was more a Eastern Establishment thing than a Western Pioneer thing. The Western wasp, though more orderly and cleaner than taco-belching Mexicans, gopher-gobbling Indians, and dog-eating Chinese, had gotten far more used to stinkery than East Coast Wasps. The cowboy often had to ride long distances on horses and didn’t have much opportunities to wash or bathe. He often ate beans and farted a lot. Men sometimes sat around the campfire and broke wind one after another for fun, as in BLAZING SADDLES. Cowboys often used cow or bison dung ― called ‘buffalo chips’ ― to cook their meals. Also, in the epic struggle to settle and build the West, there wasn’t much time for the finer things in life. Just look at the restaurant kitchen in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. It’s a mess, even though it’s run by Nordics. Even grubbier is the scene in THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE where the main character serves travelers ― presumably from the East ― a stew made up of lizards, snakes, and grasshoppers. Even after the West got settled, the culture of living rugged and dealing with the elements became part of Western Wasp lore and legend. And then later, when a whole bunch of stinky Okies came to the West looking for jobs, things got even dirtier ― but then the rise of Hollywood glamour and big industry cleaned things up, paving the way for Sunny California, but then the hippies of the 60s fouled things up again. Peckinpah was steeped in this culture. This doesn’t mean that Peckinpah loved foul smells and refused to wash himself. It just meant that Peckinpah accepted and presented the fullness of life, and part of that fullness was the element of stinkery. In MAJOR DUNDEE, Dundee, as the Union commander of the military prison, emphasizes his superiority over the Confederate captives by keeping himself clean and well-groomed as opposed to the dirty and stinky prisoners. Standing next to Tyreen, Dundee makes it knows who’s the clean one and who’s the stinky one. Indeed, stinkery has long been used as a weapon in the game of power. When Nicolas Daniloff was accused of and arrested for espionage in the 1980s, the Soviets didn’t allow him to bathe for days on end. Thus, when faced with his interrogators, he felt low and dirty, lacking in dignity and confidence. And American soldiers did the same to Iraqi prisoners of war. That way, the message is sent that WE are clean and dignified while YOU are foul and filthy. With the Nazis, ‘Aryan’ blood itself was deemed to be pure and clean while Jewish blood was seen to be sewer-like and filthy; it is for this reason that Jews hate any notion of white purity and are trying to turn white blood into mulatto blood via their ideology of mixed-racism that says a mixed-race person is superior to a pure white person. Mixed-racism is a kind of mulatto supremacism used by Jews to persuade more white women into giving birth to Obama-babies. Anyway, the dynamics of stinkery become reversed in MAJOR DUNDEE when Dundee, after being wounded by an Apache arrow, is compelled to hide out disguised as a Mexican in some run-down village. Over time, he becomes as grimy, drunk, and filthy like any other Mexican who never bathed a day in his life. And when this fallen Dundee re-encounters Tyreen, who is relatively neat and clean, Dundee is subjected to ‘reverse-humiliation’. In THE WILD BUNCH, the character of Pike Bishop is a man who prefers cleanliness and order but leads the life of a dirty bandit. Given the nature of his trade, he can’t bathe too frequently, and he becomes as filthy as the rest. At Mapache’s fort, after making a deal with the Mexican general, Pike Bishop says he would like a bath, whereupon a German advisor to Mapache says, “I think you ALL need a bath.” Pike, who likes to consider himself as a cut above most bandits, is also part of the stinkery, especially in the eyes and nose of the superior/cleaner German, a member of a race known for their ‘obsession’ with cleanliness ― and for this reason, maybe Bishop’s shooting of the German advisor at the end is kinda like shooting at his own vanity. But the Mexicans don’t seem to mind much, but then Mexicans weren’t much for order of any kind, and that may have been why Peckinpah felt so close to Mexicans, who accepted him for what he was without judgment or highfaluting airs. As for the Gorch Brother and Old Man Sykes ― played by Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, and Edmund O’Brien ― , they don’t care if they stink or not. Lyle Gorch blurts out, “I don’t need no bath” and instead demands some
women for himself and his brother. In THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, Hogue the stinky drifter goes to see a prostitute, and she cringes as she takes his dirty clothes and leads him to bath. Part of Peckinpah’s shtick may have been childish, a facet of his mischievous nature. He was probably the sort of kid who liked to stuff frogs down a girls’ blouses, eager for any attention. When respectable people streamed out of the preview screening of THE WILD BUNCH, Peckinpah couldn’t help but fiendishly grin. It was this side of Peckinpah that made him gel with with Pauline Kael, who also took pleasure in raising eyebrows of respectable bourgeois folks. Yet, the big irony of their careers was that they depended to a large extent on the existence of a respectable or polite community. If their shtick was meant to prod and provoke, even to offend on occasion, they needed the audience that could feel the bite of their ‘truths’. As much as Kael appreciated her fans and followers, her reputation rested largely on her chutzpah to upset the status quo. Thus, even as she resented the priggish editorial policy of Wallace Shawn, she was seen as cutting-edge because her style challenged the respectable modes of journalism. Someone like her would be passe today where sites like SLATE and SALON feature female ‘journalists’ who have little to write about except the adventures of their vaginas. In the age of VAGINA MONOLOGUE, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, FAMILY GUY, and RAP MUSIC ― which is defended even by aging boomers ― , Kael’s sensibility would no longer raise eye-brows. Kael’s shtick rested on her ability to play both modes, the respectable and the rebellious. What had once been racy has long been formulated and packaged into mass entertainment by Ivy League graduates working in Hollywood. What Peckinpah and Kael had once put forth as the expression/statement of truth ― and for mischievous provocation ― no longer carry the same bite. The only thing that can upset the stuffy conformity of status quo is political incorrectness, but few dare to prick that bubble since political correctness is a feature of cultural hipness. If the old correctness of cultural conservatism was associated with ‘lame’ and ‘square’ uptight people, political correctness is associated with cool rock stars, movie stars, celebrities, and supposedly ‘cutting edge’ public intellectuals like Malcolm Gladwell. Thus, political correctness is much harder to challenge since it comes with the cachet of coolness and has been instilled into the insipid hearts and minds of countless young people. Though Kael and her fans have argued that her waning relevance owed to the decline of movie culture, it was, paradoxically, because her side won. She defeated the Wallace Shawns ― and even the Andrew Sarrises and Stanley Kauffmanns ― of the world, paving the way for a much more permissive and demotic society. Once the culture, both high and low, became sufficiently vulgarized thanks to the likes of her, there was little she could do to raise eyebrows anymore, which is why the only controversy she was able to stir up in the 80s was by offending gays ― with some offhanded remark about George Cukor ― and by offending fellow Jews with her dismissive review of SHOAH. She could still raise eyebrows ‘politically’ but not culturally. In a way, what happened with Kael was like what happens with yeast. Yeast feeds on sugars and produces alcohol, but the alcohol ― the waste product of yeast feeding on sugars ― eventually kills the yeast. Thus, it could be said Kael drowned in her own waste material. This is not to knock her prowess and acumen as a film critic as she was one of the best. But as a cultural troublemaker, she never realized how much she depended on polite society to serve as her Straight Man. Groucho Marx was funny and outrageous next to Margaret Dumont but would have been nothing next to Eddie Murphy or Sam Kinison. In a way, both Peckinpah and Kael sensed to some degree the dangers of playing with fire. For example, Kael was offended not only by the film EL TOPO but by how the young audience dug the mindless violence without any discernible human emotions. Even as she played the ‘bad girl’, a part of her was worried about where the culture was headed with the new sensibility that too easily embraced sex and violence for their own sake. As for Peckinpah, there’s a certain ambivalence in his works about ‘authenticity’. In both RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and STRAW DOGS, the villains may be closer to the nature of man, but does that mean they’re better or preferable? Hammond brothers may be more honest in their wants and hatreds but are also repulsive for that very reason. The paradoxical thing about sexuality is it brings out the animal in man but also has the power to domesticate and civilize man’s animal nature. Consider SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS. In a heat of horny passion, the brothers abduct the sobbin’ women to have a good time, but the wife of the oldest brother makes them feel shame for acting like such louts. Eventually, the girls teach the brothers to mind their manners and be gentlemanlike to win their love. So, even though the men initially obeyed their pounding puds, they come to cultivate humming hearts. In the wild, the male need only to overpower the female to have her. But in civilization, the male must be worthy to win the heart of the female. So, even as the woman turns on the man’s animal sexual passion, he realizes he must mold his feelings into something nobler to win her affection. Thus, lust is shaped into love; the woman both turns him into the beast and then molds him into the prince. Well, at least this was the case traditionally. With the skankization of women, women now turn men into horny beasts, but the ‘civilizing mission’ aspect of female-dom is no longer operative, especially among the lower orders. Skanky women now turn men into studs, beasts, and brutes but nothing else. In the past, a woman would sexually turn on a man and then make it known that he must be worthy of her love by demonstrating that he’s a man of honor, respect, and means. Today, a woman shakes her ass and turns a man into a stud who wants to bang her right there and then. To be sure, skanks don’t put out to just any man. They too must be ‘won’ by ‘worthy’ men, but male worth today is all about thug-stud charisma, monster cocks, muscles, and aggression. The new sensibility is deeply wounding to white males because in the battle of malehood as determined by muscle, big dicks, and wild aggression, most Negroes will whup ‘white boys’. Of course, this is precisely what Jews want, which is why even feminists today don’t rail against Rap ― except when it’s anti-gay ― or porn since both promote interracist skankery. If one recognizes the core of radical feminism to be ugly Jewish women’s resentment of prettier shikse, then one can understand why ugly Jewish women would want Western beauty to be destroyed by race-mixing with nappy, big-lipped, and flat-nosed Negro genes. If American sexuality of the past was represented by SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, the new sexuality might be called SEVEN HO’S FOR SEVEN BROS. Anyway, the handsome Hammond brother who marries the girl seems to instinctively understand that it’s not okay to be just a brute-male. Better-looking and more intelligent than his brothers, he ideally wants his wife for himself and to keep his brothers away from her. But, he’s forced by his brothers to share her with them. The way he grew up and makes his living, if he has to choose between clan loyalty and love, he’ll go with clan loyalty. In a way, he’s somewhat like Pike Bishop who, though the leader of a gang of killers, wants to be more than a thug; he wants to be a gentleman thug. And not all the guys in STRAW DOGS are alike. Though they are all ruffians, the guy who used to be the woman’s former boyfriend ― who is also the unofficial leader of the pack ― is more intelligent and savvy. Though he rapes Amy, he understands her in ways that even she doesn’t understand; he understands that though she’s married to David Sumner ― played by Dustin Hoffman ― for status and respectability, the wild woman in her really craves a big man with muscles and wolfish pud. Indeed what starts out as horrific rape turns into intense lovemaking. But then, as with the handsome Hammond brother, he is forced by a mate to share Amy. So, not all thugs and bandits are like. Some just wanna rob and have a good time. But there are others ― the handsome Hammond brother, Pike Bishop, Amy’s former boyfriend and rapist-lover, and Steve McQueen character in THE GETAWAY ― who wanna rise above their own world. There is an element of this in Pat Garrett as well, given that he’s a former outlaw who’ve decided to move onto ‘better’ things, even to the point of betraying his friends. Betrayal seems to be the main problem in Peckinpah's moral equation. A man who wants to be more than a drifter, bandit, or outlaw is a superior man, but if he attains a higher station in life by betraying his friends, that is a cardinal sin. The problem is less Garrett’s turning his back on outlawry than his willingness to hunt down his old friends. Betrayal is both a sin and bad karma in the male code of honor. Cable Hogue has every right to be angry because he was betrayed by his two friends in the middle of the desert. Such violation of trust isn’t easily forgiven. Is it a kind of tribal gangsterism? Not really. As Michael Corleone says in THE GODFATHER II, the world of gangsters is really driven by money. Despite all the rituals and oaths, the gangster ethic is “ya gotta do what ya gotta do” to gain the upperhand, which is why the Corleones betray their ‘friends’ like anyone else. The code is different in the Western, not only among lawmen but among outlaws. There is a stronger sense of honor, which is why we expect even the thugs
of THE WILD BUNCH to fight and die for honor in the end. Anyway, the way of nature isn’t necessarily better simply because it’s ‘truer’. The Hammond brother who refuses to wash may smell more like ‘nature’, but he must surely stink. Even if the aging hero of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY is perhaps too much of a stodgy idealist and the father of the girl is too much of a repressed religious devotee, it doesn’t follow that their opposites as embodied by the ruffian Hammonds are the salt of the earth. And we come to admire Cable Hogue as he grows cleaner and more civilized, settled, and professional in his water business. And in THE GETAWAY, there are two sets of outlaws. Though all are thieves, the partnership between Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw is infinitely more appealing than the one between Al Leiteri and Sally Struthers. McQueen and McGraw act like humans while Leiteri and Struthers act like animals. In substance, they may all be crooks, but style matters in determining worth. Also, McQueen’s character keeps his end of the bargain while other crooks do not. McQueen and McGraw also like to keep themselves clean while the other duo seem content to act like Mr. Greaseball and Ms. White Trash. Even among the bad guys, there can be the gooder guy. This is true of Steiner ― played by James Coburn ― and some of his men in THE CROSS OF IRON. Though they’re German invaders of Russia, not all men of the Wehrmacht are the same. Steiner, like the Willem Dafoe character in PLATOON, tries to make the best of a bad situation. He doesn’t buy into the Nazi ideology nor care for stuff like the Iron Cross. Like the Japanese character in HUMAN CONDITION PART II, he tries to be a honorable man in a dishonorable war. If there’s a tragic notion in Peckinpah’s life and work, it has to do with the desire for truth that albeit comes with the realization of truth as a curse. Odd as it may sound that Peckinpah was a big admirer of Ingmar Bergman, it makes sense to the extent that both directors dug at the truth only to be more confused and angst-ridden by what they found. It was like digging for gold but the coming upon a rotting corpse. Smells are major motifs in the works of both directors. One of the criticisms against Peckinpah’s first movie DEADLY COMPANIONS was that the corpse never seem to rot and give off odors. Peckinpah made sure never to repeat such mistake in his subsequent movies. So, in THE WILD BUNCH, one of the bounty hunters says about the dead bodies slung over the horses, “we gotta move cuz these boys are gonna go ripe on us by tomorrow.” In THE GETAWAY, even the glamorous duo of McQueen at McGraw must, at one point, seek refuge in a stinky garbage truck. If you wanna win, sometimes you gotta get down and dirty, even literally. As for Bergman, the men of the theatre in SAWDUST AND TINSEL make a disparaging remark about the poor hygiene of circus people. In SUMMER WITH MONIKA, a romantic getaway begins as a summer idyll but soon turns into dirtiness and desperation. In THE MAGICIAN, a woman under hypnosis humiliates an authority figure by remarking about his odor. In PERSONA, the Bibi Andersson character makes a remark about the smell of decay emanating from the sleeping character played by Liv Ullmann. Stinkery is a big theme in THE SERPENT’S EGG, i.e. Germans, a very hygienic and ‘germophobic’ people are driven to radical desperation by a poverty that is turning them into stinkeroons. In FANNY AND ALEXANDER, a man goes on a drunken tirade about the foul smell of his German wife. Bergman tore at the mask, the persona, only to find more questions than answers. More he probed, more pain he found. He was like a surgeon cutting into the flesh to heal the wound but, being unable to fix the problem, kept on cutting deeper and deeper into the wound out of some morbid fascination until the patient eventually died; the reason why his films began to falter after PERSONA was he was no longer operating on a wounded patient but on corpse turning cold and going into rigor mortis. It was like a kid taking a machine apart to understand and repair it, only to find that he can’t even put it back together again, let alone fix it. If the earlier Bergman tried to wax over his pain with romantic imagery, appeals to love or God, wit/humor, or sentiment, his later films ― HOUR OF THE WOLF, SHAME, PASSION OF ANNA, etc. ― grew darker, colder, and more confused. There was some of this in Peckinpah as well. Originally, he wanted to make Westerns that told the truth than rehashed old myths. But, as he delved deeper into human nature and the conflict at the core of all existence, he found more questions than answers. Had he been a more sober and intellectual artist like Kubrick, he might have handled it with less personal angst. Instead, he was a romantic and maverick, and his heart became conflated with his art and vice versa. The nature of Peckinpah and Bergman’s problems with the truth was akin to what happens to the character in Ken Russell’s ALTERED STATES, not a good movie but interesting one. A scientist, via the aid of hallucinogenic mushrooms and a salt water tank, goes deeper and deeper into his mind, eventually reaching into the cellular level, whereupon he’s able to reverse-evolve back into an ape. Thus, he discovers that at the core of modern man is the primitive ape. The idea of the movie is so fascinating that one wonders what someone like Kubrick could have done with it. Anyway, the scientist realizes he cannot handle all this raw ‘truth’ and longs to be back in the bosom of the woman he loves, which is somewhat ironic since there’s nothing more primitively biological than sexuality, which is why civilization is premised on the conversion of lust into love, but then this crucial ideal has been perverted recently by conflating ‘gay love’ with real love between man and woman. Peckinpah reached his ‘altered states’ extremity with BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, a film so deranged and extreme in its ‘truth’ that it repulsed even most of his defenders at the time. Personally, my main gripe with the movie is that it’s poorly made, though I suppose one could argue that its rough edges of ‘amateurism’ and ‘home-movie’ sloppiness lend it a certain authenticity as a kind of a folk ballad of a drunken-loser.
Indeed, it was as if Peckinpah approached the project more as singer-songwriter than a writer-director ― consider that Bennie is a piano player and his woman Elita is a singer. Throughout the movie, there’s the sense that ‘truth’, as embodied or disembodied as the case may be in the form of Alfredo Garcia’s head, is best left buried and left alone. The more we try to peer behind the mask and gain possession of the head/mind, the less we will be able to handle the truth. Recall that the Gorgon Medusa’s head turned men into stone. And, as the character in YOJIMBO says, “live a long life eating rice gruel.” Benny ― Warren Oates ― could have led a nice quiet life with a Mexican woman named Elita ― played by Isela Vega ― , but he wants the ‘truth’. What is this ‘truth’? Greed is ‘truth’ for man is greedy by nature and wants money to impress his woman. Woman-as-prostitute is ‘truth’, as when Benny discovers his woman making gentle love to be would-be rapist of all creatures. Revenge is ‘truth’ for a man with wounded pride seeks to regain his honor by proving that he’s no one to mess with. Benny, angry with his woman for having been all too willingly given herself to the would-be rapist, takes revenge on her and the whole world by digging up and cutting off the head of Alfredo Garcia, who was her former lover. Though he’s ostensibly doing it for the bounty so that he could provide a good life for himself and his woman, he’s also raging at her for being such a whore; keep in mind Garcia too was her lover, and in that sense, there is an El-Jefe-ish side to Benny. Now, imagine driving around hot Mexico with a severed rotting head. Even for a stinkerist like Peckinpah, such ‘truth’ was too stinky. Indeed, Elita, as compromised and dishonest as she may be, is really the ‘good guy’ in the movie for she intuitively understands the paradoxical truth that the ultimate truth is dangerous and worse than the lie. Yes, she may be a shameless whore and Benny a stupid bore, but if they are willing to forgive one another and let bygones be bygones, they may be able to build a nice life together. But, that isn’t enough for Benny. He wants to follow his true nature; he wants the money, he wants to win, he wants to show her he’s a real man, he wants to take revenge on the world. But then, she’s killed, and all the ‘truths’ he'd pursued lose their meaning, and so he pursues a new truth: who put the bounty on Garcia’s head and why? He pursues his truth to the end, but in the end, it’s spells doom and disaster for all involved. Just like Billy and Garrett both shot at the same chicken heads, both El Jefe and Benny went after Garcia’s head. Garcia ‘defiled’ both El Jefe’s daughter and Benny’s girlfriend ― though ironically both the girl and Elita loved Garcia. Garcia isn’t only a narrative catalyst but a metaphor for male sexual competitiveness and revenge. When a man feels that his sexual territory has been transgressed by another, he wants revenge and to establish his mastery over the trespasser. Thus, El Jefe feels that Garcia has disgraced his daughter, and so Garcia must die. Similarly, Benny kills the biker who tries to rape Elita. Male psychology is driven by sexual pride/shame, or wounded sexual pride. Just like Garrett’s killing of Billy is, in a way, killing himself, Benny’s killing of El Jefe is like killing himself. Though Benny uses Garcia’s head to get to the source of the evil that triggered so much violence and though Benny shoots the source of that evil ― the arch patriarch El Jefe ― , the deeper truth is that El Jefe is only an institutional-ization of the male psyche that also exists in Benny. All men sexually compete with other men, and all men rage about their women ― mother, wife, sister, daughter, etc. ― being violated or befouled by other men. And this is why Benny cannot get away in the end. He kills El Jefe, but he must die too. Though Benny is a socially powerless Anglo whereas El Jefe is socially powerful Mexican, they are psychologically the flip side of the other. This is the danger faced by artists committed to the truth. We wanna believe truth = beauty, but the truth is, as often as not, dark and disturbing, ugly and offensive, or as liberals might say ‘odious’ and ‘noxious’. Also, as Dr. Zaius the orangutan argued somewhat convincingly in THE PLANET OF THE APES, the bigger truth may be that certain factual truths may actually do more harm than good, suggesting that society would do better to leave certain truths lie buried where they are and instead embrace the unifying/moralizing myth. Though Gerald Ford paid the price for pardoning Nixon and suppressing the truth about what really happened, many historians now concur that it was ‘for the good of the country’. Of so much of history it could be said, ‘when legend becomes fact, print the legend’. Given the nature of psycho-social truths, certain factual truths are deemed too incendiary, corrupting, or demoralizing for public consumption. Wasps long ruled this country by promoting certain shining narratives and/or legends while paving over certain inconvenient historical and social truths, and therefore, the Jewish left did its best to expose all the stinky truth about the Wasp-dominated America as much as possible, eventually bringing about the massive cultural upheaval in the 60s. But ever since Jews gained supreme power, they’ve been suppressing certain truths ― Jewish involvement in communism, Jewish power in America, the real story of MLK, the dark side of homosexuality, etc. ― on the premise that such truths may be too ‘divisive’ or dangerous for mass consumption. In their stead, we have narratives of the Magic Negro, the Holy Jew, the Saintly Gay, the Noble ‘Undocumented Immigrant’, and etc. But if Jews felt morally justified in attacking Wasp America, white Americans feel morally timid about challenging Jewish power and Negro violence because they’ve been brainwashed with ‘white guilt’ over ‘racism’ and ‘antisemitism’. Anyway, if civilization is a fragile enterprise premised on certain shared taboos and values, then the question worth asking is, ‘Is it worth digging for truths that might upset those necessary taboos and values, thereby weakening the pillars of civilization?’ This is what troubled Christian theologians with the arrival of Darwinian evolution. And it is what troubles liberals concerning the reality of race and racial differences. Given the importance of taboos, we can certainly understand the worries of the religious committed and the politically correct. Paradoxically, the biggest truth of civilization may be that people cannot handle the truth and therefore must be tamed with the comforting ‘noble lie’. However true it may be, the biggest truth for everyone who cares about civilization should be that blacks are unfit for civilization and too many of them will lead to the downfall of civilization. The main problem of today’s political correctness is that it pushes this crazy notion that the West will do better to have more crazy Negroes. Why is Africa so messed up? Too many Negroes. So, how is it gonna be better for Europe and America to have all those problem-causing Negroes? I mean as if we don’t have enough problems with the damn Negroes already here. One very moving scene in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA is when Benny and Elita go to a hotel where the manager correctly sees her for the kind of woman she is and refuses to offer them a room, whereupon Benny rough-handles the hombre and forces him to show his woman some respect. It’s touching because as much as Benny tries to expose and berate the whore that Elita is, he can’t stand it when she’s treated that way by other men, and he will do whatever to defend her honor or hon-whore. It’s similar to the dynamic in Bergman’s SAWDUST AND TINSEL. The circus master comes to rather despise his current young lover and sees right through her lies ― she is indeed something of a whore ― , but when her honor is sullied by some prick actor, he challenges the man and defends her honor. Both films are about being stripped naked and humiliated and then picking up the rags to cover each other with greater understanding. There’s some of that too in Bob Dylan’s songs on BLONDE ON BLONDE, especially “4th Time Around”, where a man and woman strip each other naked but then, through their mutual humiliation and deeper understanding, re-thread the fabric of their lives. And of course, it is in the story of the First Man and the First Woman, Adam and Eve, who bite into the Fruit of the Forbidden Knowledge and finally see the truth with un-blinkered eyes, only to found themselves naked and grabbing at leaves to hide their shame. More truth often leads to more pain, more humiliation. If we were to eavesdrop on everything done and said by other people, there would be ‘too much truth’. In a way, our problem with the Nixon tapes is not that Nixon told lies but that he spoke too much truth in them. The public Nixon was Tricky Dick, a man denounced for his lies. But the private Nixon was Pricky Dick who said stuff most people dared not say in public; and there was much truth to what he said, especially pertaining to Jewish power. So, it’s somewhat hypocritical of liberals, who attacked him of being a liar, to get so outraged over truths Nixon said behind closed doors. In public, Nixon never badmouthed Jews but in private he often did with great honesty. Thus, truth offends Jews more than lies do. Even so, the stuff Nixon did and said in public is kindergarten stuff compared to what MLK said behind closed doors. I suspect the King tapes still remain sealed because he may have well have said controversial stuff about Jews ― about how blacks must use Jews just like how Jews are using blacks. The dark truthful side of MLK as caught in FBI tapes is surely more disturbing than the private side of Nixon recorded
in the White House tapes. It used to be that Presidents, even as they said all the correct things in public, often said what was really on their minds behind closed doors. This is NOT okay with the Jews who wanna control every facet of power in government. Thus, by shaming the Nixon tapes, Jewish controllers of the media are sending a message to ALL politicians that they better not say anything negative about Jews EVEN BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. Anyway, while lies shouldn’t be favored over truths as a general policy, there may be a limit to the good that truth can accomplish though, of course, ‘good’ is relative concept. In the past, the media often didn’t report the salacious details of respectable people, famous people, and powerful people for the sake of public morality. So, even though journalists knew about the peccadillos of FDR, Eisenhower, and JFK, they mostly kept mum. For the good of community, it was thought such matters should be kept secret to maintain public respect for authority. But the rise of Jewish power in America demanded a more aggressive probing of the inner workings of Wasp Power Elite. Especially with the Vietnam War and Watergate scandals, American journalism became much more dogged and less compromised. But in time, this came to bite liberals as well, what with the expose of Gary Hart in 1988 and Bill Clinton a decade later with the Monica Lewinsky affair. With both sides digging up all sorts of foul stuff on the other side ― and what with Jews and gays now being the elites of America ― , liberals have lately been trying to tone down the aggressive insistence on truth, which is the Jewish Wall Street got away with murder in the last few yrs. Generally, whoever happens to be out of power calls for more truth, and whoever happens to be in power calls for less truths. However, even though Jews came to possess immense power by digging up all sorts of dirty stuff on Wasps, white people have been conditioned to think they mustn’t dig up any foul facts about the Jews NO MATTER HOW POWERFUL JEWS ARE. Also, since Jews own the government and all its intelligence agencies, the top law firms, the media, and lots of money, Jews have the dirty files on everyone, which means they have the power to derail or destroy the career of anyone they choose. But if you’re not a Jew, you don’t have the means or connections to dig up foul stuff about powerful Jews; and even if you have the goods on the Jews, you don’t own the media to disseminate the truth; and even if you were able to spread the truth on the internet, the Jewish-controlled government will come after you and book you for something even if it has to cook up some bogus accusation. Why has Julian Assange of the Wikileaks fame been so reluctant to release documents pertaining to Israel and American Jewish power? Anyway, there’s a scene in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA where Benny’s woman is sitting in the shower alone. It’s another washing scene in a Peckinpah film, perhaps an indication of the overly Pig-Pen-ish nature of truth, i.e. its excess grime must be washed away for any kind of peace. Anyway, returning to the matter of Ollinger and odorifics in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, the spiritual cologne of religion could be a means by which to mask his physical odor. There are some people who make peace with their stinkery, like the Warren Oates character in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and a particular German soldier in THE CROSS OF IRON. But there are others who, like the Hitler of Norman Mailer’s novel, feel befouled by something within that seems ineradicable, and so their way of dealing with the problem is by obsessing about cleanliness in the form of ideology or spirituality. In a way, there was some of this in the appeal of communism to Jews. Many Jews felt stinky due to their association with a reactionary cultural tradition whose iconic image was old robed men with hairy beards. Whether Jews bathed often or not, they simply didn’t look very clean because of their style and manner. They looked grubby. Also, Jewish association with money-making made them appear money-grubbing as well. So, the gentile world saw Jews as a grubby people grubbing for money with their hairy hands. Jews have also been associated with stinginess, so stingy in fact that they didn’t even buy soap to wash themselves. Just look at the Fagin character in OLIVER TWIST ― the movie as I haven’t read the book. So, the appeal of communism for many Jews was its cleanness. For Karl Marx, communism was the soap that would scrub the grubbiness off of Jews. Without the money-grubbing foulness of capitalism, Jews would no longer be able to ply their dirty trade as moneychangers and exploiters. Communism would thus turn Jews from grubbies to scrubbies. Now, we don’t know if Billy’s remark about Ollinger was just a generic insult or personal dig at Ollinger’s real need for a deodorant. But given Ollinger’s furious reaction, maybe there was some truth to what Billy said. I must say, though, given that almost no one seems to wash themselves with any regularity in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Billy and his gang can’t possibly smell much better. Indeed, just about the only people we see bathing or shaving are Garrett and Poe. After Billy’s escape, we see Garrett getting a shave and telling Alamosa Bill to reserve a bath for him at the hotel. Later, we see Garrett being washed by a bunch of whores. It’s as if Garrett feels dirty and needs to bathe more often. Maybe it’s like Lady Macbeth becoming obsessed about washing her hands after they’re stained with blood. In Garrett’s case, he’s cleaning himself for the ritual of killing Billy. As for Poe, we see him shaving in the Turner 1988 Version in a room with three old-timers. Poe is very image-conscious and superioritist. If Billy’s self-confidence comes naturally, Poe has to constantly groom himself and work on his image to boost his inflated sense of worth. Billy is narcissistic, which is different from being superioritistic. Narcissistic people tend to be self-centered and feel proud about what they are. They don’t need approval from others, not least because they know they have the natural charm to win over just about anyone. Bill Clinton the Comeback Kid in the 90s was a narcissist. He knew he could charm even conservatives. He knew he had that twinkle in his eye. He didn’t need to make a fuss about being superior since he naturally felt superior. In contrast to narcissists are superioritists who, deep down inside, feel ugly, small, and frustrated. Superioritism is most often a crutch for those suffering from inferiority complex, and this is evident in the cases of Heinrich Himmler and Alex Kurtagic, who favors white supremacism to white humanism. Himmler was pudgy, ugly, and possessed of no superior qualities of his own, and so he embraced a collective ideology of superioritism so he could feel as a member and even serve as a leader of the superior race. Alex Kurtagic is a swarthy, pudgy, chubby, and ridiculous third-rater with no qualities that anyone would deem as superior ― unless one happens to be one of those Evola-quoting drones at Alternative Right site ― , and so he clings to superioritism. Paradoxically, he yammers endlessly about superiority because he needs it as a crutch to prop up his pee-wee ego. Kurtagic, feeling like a total nobody on his own, needs to identify with an ‘Aryan’ supremacist ideology like Nazism to feel special. Similarly, Poe needs to associate himself with ‘great men’ like Chisum in order to make himself feel more important than he really is. While narcissism is no virtue, it has the advantage of being more honest than superioritism. A narcissist honestly feels good about himself whereas a superioritist inflates himself precisely because he feels unsure of himself deep inside. As far as I’m concerned, Billy of Peckinpah’s film is a jerk, but he is more at ease with himself than Poe could ever be. So far, we dwelt on the smell factor of the scene with Ollinger, but the scene is remarkable in other ways. Though the room isn’t very large, the placing of Ollinger in a dark corner apart from the three men by a sun-drenched window makes for an expressive use of space. Though Ollinger and Billy are in the same room, they seem worlds apart, mentally inhabiting different universes with entirely different laws of nature. Despite all of Billy’s charm, he cannot ‘fool’ Ole Ollinger. And for all the buckshots of brimstone and hellfire fired from Ollinger’s throat, Billy remains bored and unfazed. In some ways, Ollinger is the most repulsive character in the movie; he is, at once, the most moralistic and most murderous. Even when Billy surrendered after Garrett’s raid, Ollinger tried to shoot him and is stopped only by Bell. Ollinger is a living example of the paradox that moralism can abet murder-ism. He’s so self-righteous as a man of God that he cannot tolerate sinners. Given his sullen and demented demeanor, he could be repressing his own demons and projecting them onto others. His counterpart is the sadistic religious clan in FANNY AND ALEXANDER that, in its ultra-moralism, is utterly blind to its cruelty and inhumanity. For Ollinger, Billy isn’t just some two-bit outlaw who should be locked up or jailed. Billy is the son of the Devil himself, not least because he seems to be so at ease with his outlawry. Billy isn’t just a criminal but an outlaw par excellence, utterly shameless in his sinful ways. So, Ollinger tried to kill Billy on the spot when the latter gave himself up. But having been prevented from killing Billy, he tries ground-and-pound Billy’s soul to kneel before God. He wants to defeat Billy spiritually. Billy isn’t just a bad kid but an uppity bad kid, and that drives Ollinger crazy. Ollinger’s opposite is Lemuel ― played by Chill Wills ― who berates Garrett just as Ollinger berated Billy. If Ollinger
is all about God and the righteous way, old Lemuel is all about rod ― the penis ― and riotous way. A saloon-keeper by trade, he loves to talk dirty about the tits and pussies of whores. In a way, the scene with Ollinger and Billy/Garrett/Bell is paralleled by the scene with Lemuel and Garrett/Holly/Beaver. Both Ollinger and Lemuel are seen hugging shotguns, and both are riled up to hostility. If Ollinger aims his tirade at bad boy Billy, Lemuel digs into the sell-out scoundrel Garrett. Both scenes involve the motif of poop. Ollinger’s shotgun to Billy’s chest makes Billy wanna take a massive dump, and Garrett’s killing of Holly makes Lemuel take a major crap in his britches. Righteous or riotous, both are rough men. Ollinger is like a bull, Lemuel is like a hog. Despite Ollinger’s unpleasantness, there’s something about him that reflects a part of Peckinpah who himself wasn’t very pleasant. Though Peckinpah’s conscious attitude toward life was more along the lines of Lemuel, there was another layer that was moralistic and bullying. Thus, Ollinger is what might be called the ‘dark mirror’ to Peckinpah. A dark mirror is consciously denounced as darkness but nevertheless reflects something crucial about the person denouncing it. On the conscious level, Peckinpah found Ollinger’s mad religiosity dark and dangerous, but on a deeper level, Peckinpah was no less ‘bullying’ and sermonizing with his own vision of life. Just as Ollinger tries to beat the fear of God into Billy, Peckinpah tried to rub our faces in the violent nature of man. While Peckinpah didn’t preach violence, he preached violence as the essential and inescapable human nature. Thus, just as Ollinger is miffed with Billy’s dismissal of God of the Good Book, Peckinpah was irritated to no end with people who dismissed his films as the works of a neanderthal thug and misogynist. He especially blew his top when Pauline Kael accused him of having made the first ‘fascist work of art’ in STRAW DOGS. Peckinpah almost wanted to a hold a shotgun to Kael’s chest and make her confess as to the true nature of man. Ollinger isn’t admirable, but he may be the one formidable character in the movie in this sense that he is real. He may be all messed up inside and even a psychopath of sorts, but he’s a man of real conviction. He means business by God, and the pages of the Scriptures are the only legal tender he’ll accept. He may be the only character in the movie with anything approaching real commitment, the only other candidate being Sheriff Bell’s wife ― played by Katy Jurado ― who forces her husband to toss back the gold piece to Garrett before joining the raid on Black Harris. Ollinger lives and dies for a belief/cause as a true believer; he believes in something higher than himself. Such could be the stuff of nobility but isn’t in his case because he’s a simple-minded brute, a beast-saint and thug-moralist. In the Turner 1988 Version, Garrett asks Ollinger, “What else do you believe in other than God?,” and Ollinger answers, “Me!” This suggests that even as Ollinger sees himself as a loyal servant of God, he’s a God nut because, in some hidden corner of psyche, he conflates himself with God. Thus paradoxically, some people who claim to be the humblest servants of God could actually be those who most want to be God.) Worse, what is so great about Billy when he seems so remorseless about killing a bunch of people? One could argue Billy only did what he had to do in order to save his own skin in a world of random violence, but if the Old West was indeed a time and place where a man’s being and pride could only be preserved through endless spurts of violence, what was so great about it and why should we mourn its passing? Billy comes across as just another gunslinger, albeit one with the faster draw and flashier smile. The problem of Billy’s characterization is echoed in Bob Dylan’s song, surely one of his worst. It’s uncharacteristically stupid and dim-witted for Bob Dylan and maybe even had the unfortunate impact of simplifying Peckinpah’s view of Billy. (Had Jerry Fielding worked on the score with his characteristic subtlety, nuance, and irony, Peckinpah might have seen Billy in a different light. But with Dylan’s simple-minded paean to Billy running through his mind, Peckinpah could have fancied Billy as a Counterculture folk hero.) Anyway, the lyrics negate themselves just like the characterization in the movie. The song begins with Dylan yapping about Billy the Kid as a dangerous fugitive and outlaw ― we hear he might have even shot a woman ― , but then the song whines, “Billy, they don’t like you to be so free.” Well, if there’s some criminal on the loose killing men and women, I wouldn’t like him to be so ‘free’ either. It’s ridiculous. Such mindlessness was in sharp contrast to Dylan’s contemplation of American myths and legends in his landmark works BASEMENT TAPES and JOHN WESLEY HARDING. The latter album begins with the song of the same title that extols an outlaw who was reputedly even worse than Billy the Kid, but the listener senses Dylan tailspinning a tall-tale. He sings it straight but through the corner of his mouth. In its wry understatement, we know Dylan isn’t so much telling of a famous outlaw as telling of the telling of a famous outlaw; and most remarkably, he did it without sounding academic or post-modern. He was sincere in his fascination with and appreciation of a bygone America with its rich folklore and legends. The truth was not so much in the tales themselves as in the way storytelling and mythologization of the world around us defines so much of what we are or think we are. (This poses a problem for historians. Most modern historians have been committed to the idea that historical facts are the most important things in the study of history. Therefore, historical revisionism tries to understand the past ‘better’ by challenging old truisms with newly discovered facts. So, if people have believed in Truth A for a long time but recent discovery points to Truth B that contradicts Truth A, historians will now favor Truth B on the premise that historical facts must always trump historical fiction. But what about the inescapable fact that Truth A, though recently exposed as false, had played such a major role in shaping real history for so long? If fiction can have such a profound impact on history, what is historical fact and what is historical fiction? If fictions can, in fact, shape real history, then history is something more than the discovery of facts but an understanding of the nature of change as a mysterious process. After all, consider the story of Jesus Christ. We know that He was not the Son of God since there is no God. And yet, consider how profoundly the fiction of Jesus Christ as the Messiah changed the course of human history for two thousand years. The Biblical version of His life is surely rife with falsehoods and myths, but its impact on history was undeniably real. So, is the historical Jesus more real than the mythical Jesus when the mythical Jesus had a greater impact on the actual story of mankind? So, what is real and what is unreal in history? We also like to believe that truth = progress. But what if it has the opposite effect? Would White America have been better if it hadn’t faced up to the truth of what had been done to blacks and Indians? If facing up to one’s dark past leads to progress while the suppression of such truths leads to decline, why has the white race been declining and losing out ever since it decided to be so truthful about its past? And can a people expect other peoples to be mutualist in facing up to their own dark pasts? What if one people’s moral conscience is exploited by other peoples working in bad faith only for their own self-interests. White gentiles have been facing up to their dark history of antisemitism, but have Jews been looking back on their own history with similar self-criticism? Why is it that when Jews talk about ‘historical crimes’ and ‘collective guilt’, it’s always about what white goyim did to them but NEVER what Jews did to white goyim? If many modern historians have emphasized facts over all else ― even though fictions may have shaped history more than facts did ― , other historians, especially in more recent times, have been more interested in the ‘logic’ of history than in the facts of history. Some historians try to understand this ‘logic’ for academic reasons in order to understand how history works while other historians study this ‘logic’ to use as a political tool, to learn how to make it work for the interests of their own agendas or people. Thus, if academic historians are fascinated by how fiction may shape actual history ― which becomes a fact in its own right ― , activist historians are excited about how they can spin their own mytho-historical fictions to alter the direction of history to their liking. Thus, many black and leftist historians no longer care about historical facts as such. Facts are only useful if they serve a certain cause, but then fictions could be just as or even more useful for the cause. The leftist/black view of history isn’t as an ‘objective’ academic discipline but as a weapon of power. What really happened is less important than how the remembrance of the past can be shaped to alter the future. It’s then no surprise that Howard Zinn is one of the favorite ‘historians’ on the Left for his ‘history’ isn’t academic but activist in its distortion of history as an ideological and even spiritual weapon to destroy certain perceived ideological and racial enemies of Jews and non-whites. Anyway, ‘historical logic’ depends a lot of psychology, i.e. history moves forward by series of interactions between material forces and psychological tendencies, especially as manipulated by the elites. But even among the elites, not everyone or every group
is alike. There’s the intellectual elite, the economic elite, the moral/spiritual elite, the cultural elite. There are also elites along racial, ethnic, geographic, and religious lines; Wall Street elite in NY may not see eye to eye with Big Oil elite in Houston. A man with lots of money can shape ideas and culture by funding certain kinds of intellectuals and artists, but intellectuals and artists, by the sheer force of their will or vision, can shape the minds of the rich elites or their children in radically different ways. For example, even before their decline, Wasp elites and especially their children were falling under the influence of the ascendent Jewish intellectual and cultural elites. Also, more than most, rich Jews have generously funded intellectual ideas and creative endeavors in the modern era both out of passion and for power. Of course, there are more than one kind of ‘historical logic’. For Karl Marx, the logic of history wasn’t so much to be found in facts as in the ‘laws’ of class conflict and struggle. Marx essentially understood this in terms of economics and psychology: To live with dignity and meaning, man needed to be assured of the basic necessities of life and fulfilling work. For work to be meaningful, mankind must own the means of production. Without such ownership, the worker would feel alienated from his work as his labor is exploited to serve the greed of the bourgeoisie. If the bourgeoisie were overthrown, the working class would own the economy, and the wealth would be shared more or less equally among the workers. Work would then have meaning, and since work is the center of man’s life, life would have meaning too. Thus, mankind would control the materiality of the world than be controlled by it. Though many on the Right have accused Marx of having been a materialist philosopher who saw everything through the prism of soulless materialist economics, this isn’t really correct. Historical and economic materialism was a means by which Marx could understand and critique the workings of the world and history in order to arrive at a formula for liberating mankind from materiality. Marx saw material history as having been essentially oppressive since the means of production, though toiled upon by laborers, were owned by the elites. But if the economic elites could be overthrown and if the workers came to own the economy, the masses could finally be liberated materially, in which case the people would have more free time for things like art, leisure, creativity, education, philosophy, etc. If the workers were less alienated, less tired, and less hungry under a socially just communist system, there would be less reason to obsess about material needs since they would have more time for stuff like culture, science, and imagination. Though communism in practice turned economics into a form of statist chattel slavery, Marx’s vision was essentially that of the worker freed from oppressive work by meaningful work. Instead of working as an alienated paid laborer in a factory owned by the bourgeoisie elite, the prole would work for himself in a factory that is collectively owned by fellow workers. He would thus be liberated not only materially but psychologically. Psychologically thus liberated, there would no reason for the worker to obsess about material injustice, and without such obsessions, he could use his free time to pursue things of the heart and mind. He could fall in love, he could read a lot of books. Materially, the wealth produced by the factory would be shared by the workers. Psychologically, the worker would have pride in knowing that the factory belongs to him and his co-workers. Of course, however appealing this may have sounded in theory, it was bound to fail since the bourgeoisie are not idle rich who just sit back and leech off the blood and sweat of the workers but the very people with the talent, vision, and ingenuity to conceive of new ideas, take risks, build factories, hire workers, and expand business. For workers to have work, there must be people to hire them, and it’s businessmen who do the hiring. Proto-fascists had a keener insight into ‘historical logic’ because they understood the multiplicity of human psychology. For Marx, work was psychologically alienating and meaningless unless workers could gain control of the means of production. Only then could mankind be liberated from unhappiness. According to Marx, anything that made the masses happy in a non-communist society was merely an opiate concocted by the devious elites and their running dogs, especially in the Church. But proto-fascists knew there were various forms of psychological needs and meanings. Psychology of meaning and happiness wasn’t merely related to work and economics but to things like community, tribe, heritage, race, and other things of ‘sacred’ value. So, one could be a worker in a capitalist economy and still find genuine meaning as an individual with free will, a member of a family and tribe, an inheritor of a rich tradition, a citizen of a unique national heritage. And there was the matter of race, i.e. each race has its unique beauty, and there’s meaning to be found in the adoration and preservation of that beauty. Most Jews hated fascism because, as none-too-pretty aliens and outsiders, they could not belong to the sacred community of the tribal-racial goyim; and even if Jews were allowed to join in, most declined either out of ideological incompatibility or in allegiance to their own heritage of sacred tradition and identity from which they derived immense pride. Especially given that Jewish power derived from cosmopolitan globalism, a world made up of unique nations with their own powerful sense of pride stood as an obstacle to Jewish power. Ironically enough, the people who paved the way for the fall of fascism were extreme fascists of Germany, a.k.a. the Nazis. Hitler seemed incapable of doing anything wrong when he insisted on Germany for Germans. Up to the annexation of Sudetenland, he struck most people, German and non-German alike, as a patriotic German working for Germany, the opposite of the Jew who was undermining the sanctity of national borders and cultures. If Hitler had stopped with Sudetenland and respected the borders of other nations with their own unique sacred heritages, it would have been win-win for everyone but the Jews. But by violating his own principles of sacred nationalism, Hitler transgressed against the borders of other nations with their own sacred historical narratives and gave fascism a bad name as a result. Fascism could only have succeeded as a nationalism. If the whole point of fascism is to appreciate and preserve what is organically sacred of one’s people and nation, then one must respect what is organically sacred of other peoples. Prior to Hitler’s war-mongering, it had been the Internationalist Jews who’d been the enemies of the sacredness of nations and cultures. But once Hitler began to invade other nations, fascism went from a nationalism to an imperialism. And as Germans came to occupy and rule over non-Germans, what may have been psychologically meaningful to the Germans couldn’t have much meaning to non-Germans whose own unique cultural visions and values were trampled by the German invaders. But there were other historical ironies still. International Jews became Zionists, aka Jewish fascists, committed to preserving what is uniquely and organically Jewish. Even leftist Jews became passionate about Israel and about Jewish power in America. Though Jews are said to comprise the most liberal group in America, they are also the most atavistic and nationalistic. Jews tend to be very cohesive, very proud, and very tribal. Indeed, even their Internationalism and globalism have really been a form of Jewish nationalism. In a world made up mostly of non-Jews, it’s been to the advantage of Jews to weaken and undermine the sense of cultural uniqueness and national/racial pride among gentiles. Jews have embraced liberalism not so much because they love being liberal but because they feel safer in a liberal environment in a world where the overwhelming people are non-Jewish. But even as Jews want non-Jews to be liberal toward Jews, Jews are not liberal toward non-Jews. Jews are bullying, judgmental, intimidating, aggressive, and hostile to non-Jews. Today, so-called ‘liberal’ Jews push illiberal political correctness to silence all expressions they don’t like. Through non-stop PC from cradle, Jews try to prevent goyim from harboring ‘antisemitic’ thoughts even in the privacy of their own minds. So, when Jews say they are ‘liberal’, it really means they want us to be liberal toward them while they themselves are not toward us. To the extent that Jews are more obsessed about their holy heritage, their sacred tragedies, and their unique identity more than any other people are of their own, Jews are in the way the most fascist of all modern peoples. With their brilliant and wily ways, Jews have concealed and guarded their own fascism by beating on the fascisms of other peoples with the conceit of liberalism and cult of political correctness. However, at least in one sense, today’s Jews are following in the footsteps of Marx. Though Marx hated the bourgeoisie, he also appreciated their role in history as the builder of the modern world. No bourgeoisie, then no modern industry for the proletariat to inherit. So, even though the bourgeoisie had to be eventually overthrown, the workers of the world could own and enjoy the future ONLY AFTER the bourgeoisie had completed their historical mission of building massive factories and modern enterprises. It’s like alcohol produced by the yeast eventually kills the yeast, but the yeast was necessary in the first place to produce the alcohol. Though Jews no longer believe in Classical Proletarian Marxism, they subscribe
to the notion of Radical Elite Marxism. According to this form of Neo-Marxism, it isn’t the workers who shall inherit the earth but the Jewish elites. But just as the workers needed the bourgeoisie to pave the way for the creation of the modern world that the workers would inherit, Jews need white people to pave the way for the creation of the modern world that Jews would inherit. There never would have been modern America without Anglo-Americans. There wouldn’t have been the Modern West without Europeans and rise of Christianity. Though Jews played a crucial role in the creation of modernity, Jews couldn’t have created the modern world all by themselves. They didn’t have the numbers, the adventurousness, the courage, and etc. to do what so many white people did. Some Jews provided the funds, but the heavy lifting and fighting had to be done by the whites. Now that the modern world has been created, who’s ‘inheriting’ most of it? The Jews. So, Marx was wrong that the wealth would go from the bourgeois elites to the workers. It has gone from Wasp elites and the white middle class to the Jewish elites. Jews waited for white people to do most of the hard work and then came along and used their superior smarts and cunning moral bullying to take everything from whites. And Jews don’t just want white wealth. They wanna control the white heart and soul. With the Jewish-run media telling white boys and girls to worship gays and support ‘gay marriage’, white boys and girls are doing just that. And Jews also want to own white penises and vaginas. Jews now encourage white vaginas to mix with Negro penises while reducing white penises into porn-addicted masturbatory idiots whaking off to interracist sex disseminated all over the internet by Jews. Jews and their favorite allies the gays have inherited the world, indeed stolen the world from the very people who did most to create it. During the 2000s, dirty Wall Street Jews played fast and loose to rake in gazillions, but when their casino finance capitalism failed, they, with their allies in government, stole trillions from white middle class Americans. Just like that. We all work for Jews because the government itself is owned by Jews. Even if you work for a goy boss or happen to be self-employed, you and your children have been burdened with massive debts created by Too-Big-To-Fail Jews. If blacks demand reparations, Jews demand endless compensations. Even when Jews gamble and lose, they must be bailed out by the rest of us because they are just too powerful, too special, and too-big-to-fail. And since Jews own the media and law too, don’t expect any outrage and action from the Fourth Estate and the Rule of Law since most journalists and lawyers are merely agents or prostitutes of Jewish power. Everyone knows that if he or she speaks truth to Jewish power, he or she won’t have much of a career in elite institutions.) Indeed, after the relative ‘clarity’ of the opening song in JOHN WESLEY HARDING, the rest of Side A is filled with songs adrift somewhere between dream and waking life, night and day. “As I Went Out One Morning” recounts a dream. So does “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.” “All Along the Watchtower” opens with timid angst and closes with apocalyptic foreboding. In contrast, the “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” sounds half-baked in its willful naivete. It’s just a stupid celebration of an outlaw with maybe the dumbest lyrics Dylan wrote since “Positively 4th Street”, which at least has a decent tune. As it turned out, Dylan ended up scoring the entire movie, and thankfully, the other song in the film, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, and the instrumentals are much better.
For some reason, Peckinpah loved the Billy song but hated the rest of the score. Though it leads us to question Peckinpah’s judgment in music, I can understand why Peckinpah was averse to the idea of Dylan scoring the entire film. Dylan, though a superb songwriter, had no understanding of the nuances of film soundtrack, and so what may work on a rock album may not work in a movie. Jerry Fielding, the master film composer who did the incomparable score for THE WILD BUNCH, was brought on the set to collaborate with Dylan but left fuming because he couldn’t stand Dylan’s blase arrogance, self-absorption, and stubbornness. I guess it’s never easy for two Jews with strong egos to work together. Though Dylan’s score for the film is pretty decent ― perhaps even superior to scores for most other Westerns ― , I’m inclined to side with Fielding, if only because his instincts for THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS were so unerringly brilliant. His score was also the best thing about the deeply problematic BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. Dylan basically composed paint-cans of music to be sprayed onto the scenes, whereas Fielding understood the subtlest dynamics of the interrelationship between music and image. Fielding carefully studied the scenes first, capturing not only their primary colors but all the shades and blurs in between, and then worked with a variety of palettes ranging from the boldest to the most ambiguous.
He found Dylan’s method lazy and unprofessional. Dylan, in the style of a rock star, got the gist of a scene and then composed a piece like a song. Fielding approached his art like a painter, i.e. the director and the rest of the crew drew the pictures and then he, the music-painter, added the colors; even in a single scene, as in single frame of painting, Fielding knew he had to play with combinations of colors in various shades. Dylan’s approach was more like a auto body painter, i.e. he basically chose one color for each scene. Field’s score would have served the film whereas Dylan’s score had the temerity to stand equal to the film. (I would like to see THE GETAWAY with Jerry Fielding’s score, which was scrapped in favor of a passable one by Quincy Jones due to Jones’ contract with Steve McQueen.) One particular song on the album which became a rock classic is, of course, “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”, which Jerry Fielding couldn’t stand. Though I like the song ― it is, however, a shameless ripoff of Neil Young’s “Helpless” ― , I can understand why Fielding found it ridiculous and anachronistic to show an old sheriff dying to a ‘rock song’, and indeed I like the Turner Preview Version’s use of the background music minus the singing. Sheriff Baker’s death by the river is maybe the highlight of the film, a moment that belongs to the dying man and his wife wife(Katy Jurado) alone, and we don’t need Dylan explaining what may be going inside the old man’s mind.
But the fault wasn’t entirely with Dylan, and in some ways, one could argue his score works because Peckinpah himself worked more like a balladeer than a symphonist on the film. With THE WILD BUNCH, Peckinpah, along with Fielding, inspected the tiniest element of every scene ― physical details, emotional nuances, tensions within tensions, etc ― and constructed a towering cinematic symphony composed of a million parts, but in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Peckinpah had some big themes with which he painted the whole canvas.
One of the most interesting things about PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is the power dynamic among people, especially among the men. This is known as the alpha-beta dynamic, which, however, is always a relative thing. A tough white guy in a small town may be an alpha, but if he attends a college on a sports scholarship and finds himself surrounded by bigger and tougher Negroes, he’s suddenly a beta. Mike Tyson acted like the biggest alpha male fighter in the 80s. But after he lost badly to Lennox Lewis in the 90s, he sounded like a pussified boy and babbled like a beta. His interview after being KO’d even made us pity the fool. The man who’d previously said he was gonna destroy Lewis was now whimpering how much he respected and admired Lewis and Lewis’s mother. He sounded like he’d been fuc*ed in the ass.
And Brock Lesnar, the white-trash-athlete, who used to talk so big, talked like a pussyboy after getting clobbered by Cain Velasquez and Overeem. And Jim Jeffries, the super white man, sounded like a little girl after getting whupped by Jack Johnson, the horrible Negro. Jeffries moaned that Johnson was the much greater fighter and that he couldn’t have defeated Johnson in a thousand years, and thus began the 1000 Year Negreich over the white race, culminating with the presidency of Obama and the faggot-like pussyboy behavior among most white politicians.
To be sure, there’s one thing to be said for losing. Losing can make a person more humane, a bit wiser. There’s no better life lesson than losing. It teaches the lesson of limits and humility. Surely, Tyson after his defeat to Lewis was more humane than Tyson prior to the fight who was saying stuff like he was gonna eat Lewis’s children and such. (Indeed, the whole notion of the Noble Negro and Magic Negro arose from the black man’s long historical defeat at the hands of the white man. Living under the thumb of the white man who held the gun and whip, the Negro learned the lesson about the nature of power and how it could be abused by man to oppress and exploit another man. It was the fear of the white man that humanized the Negro, and it is from this history of fear and suffering that arose the notion of the defeated Negro who was beaten in body but wise in spirit. But once the Negro began to win athletically, sexually, and physically against the white man, he started to get all arrogant, violent, and obnoxious. Soon, the notion of the Noble Negro came to exist essentially as a politically correct cult since there’s so little of it in reality. Most Negroes are so stupid that they think they own the world because they rule the streets outside their homes. They think they’re the best and the baddest because they can whup anyone on the same street. This sense of POWER robbed the Negro of all wisdom about the nature of power. But there are Negroes like Obama whose eyes are on bigger prize. He knows that blacks still have a long way to go in the realm of elite power. This realization filled Obama with a certain savvy humility and jive-ass wisdom. He knew that if he were to gain the big prize, he would have to play the Nice Negro who’s ever so appreciative of powerful Jews and white folks who would be so nice to give a ‘poor boy’ like him a chance.)
But, there is losing and there is LOSING. Losing and learning a lesson about hubris can be sobering and even ennobling. American defeat in Vietnam wasn’t fatal; Americans learned a valuable lesson about the limits of what it can do. One can lose a fight and gain the soul. (In a way, the Vietnam Syndrome was a good thing. America, the most powerful nation on Earth, learned that it wasn’t all-powerful. If anything, American foreign policy got more reckless and dangerous with the fading of the Vietnam Syndrome during the Reagan and Bush years. The invasion of Grenada made Americans feel gung-ho again. RAMBO movies made Americans even dumber. And then the quick victory in the Gulf War made Americans feel they could do just about anything. And then, there was much fanfare about how America was the only superpower in the world when US-led NATO forces clobbered Serbia as Russia watched helplessly. The pundits were saying the Vietnam Syndrome was history as if Americans of the 21st century could do anything around the world. The result was the Iraq War with support of the entire MSM and 80% of the American public. Had Vietnam Syndrome still been with us in 2003, Americans would have been far more cautious about supporting such a war. Now, we have the Iraq Syndrome, and I hope it stays with us forever.) But there’s another kind of loss that leads to the loss of the soul as well. When a man in prison is sexually assaulted and raped in the ass, he is likely to lose everything, both body and soul. What he undergoes isn’t a lesson but a total humiliation, a total loss of his human pride and dignity. It’s one thing to have one’s pride tempered; it’s another to have it utterly destroyed. And this is what happened to Jim Jeffries and the white race with the rise of the black man. It would have been one thing for white males to realize that they can’t win all the time and sometimes they’re bound to lose to blacks. But that’s not what happened. It dawned on white males that their loss to the Negro in sports ― and thus in the area of manhood and sexual power ― was total and permanent. Jack Johnson didn’t beat Jim Jeffries because he just happened to be the ‘better man’ on that day but because the Negro happens to be the tougher athlete FOREVER. Thus, the defeat of Jim Jeffries was not simply a case of one black guy beating one white guy, but a total assfuc*ing of the white race by the black race. Since then, white males have lost their pride. But things got worse with the rise of the hideous Jews. White males lost the pride but they still felt the rage and anger. They felt, “fuc*ing niggers are whupping our ass and will make moves on our women.” In such anger was a kind of racial consciousness and wounded pride. But Jews controlling the media made white people feel ‘racist’ and ‘evil’ for feeling such anger and rage against black dominance in sports. So, white boys not only had to watch Negroes whup whites but had to cheer for the Negroes as their heroes. White boys became just like white cheerleaders; they became pussies. Similarly, Jews are working to utterly destroy Southern white pride. Though the Civil War was brutal and Union victory was decisive, Northern whites had allowed Southern whites to cling to their pride in having fought a tough war with great honor and courage. Northern Whites didn’t pull a Nuremberg Trial on Southern Whites ― that would come later with the Jewish retro-attack on the American South. And this Yankee respect ― even in disagreement ― for the South can be seen in movies like John Ford’s HORSE SOLDIERS and MAJOR DUNDEE; and remarkably in GETTYSBURG, an exception to the rule in more recent times. The South was defeated but still allowed to maintain its dignity of having fought an honorable war. Similarly, the white man defeated the Red man but allowed the Red man to hold onto his pride as a brave warrior who’d fought courageously for his dignity and culture, savage as it may have been. (But with the Negro, the white man didn’t just defeat the body of the Negro but his soul as well for the white man could instinctively ― and correctly ― sense that Negro was an especially dangerous and savage kind of man-beast. Muscular, naturally wild, and gorilla-like, the black man had to be tamed into a ho-de-do-ing coon because, otherwise, he would likely rise up and whup the white man and rape the white woman.) There was a kind of agreement among Anglo cousins in the North and the South that whatever their great differences, they were still one people and deserving of respect of the other even amidst mutual hostility. And this was also true of England and America after the American Revolutionary War. Despite the bitterness and acrimony, there was also a degree of mutual respect, a token appreciation that both sides fought for a cause each side found just and worthy. But Jews today are fighting the Civil War all over again(indeed as another version of WWII) via their control of the media, and this time, Jews wanna make sure that the South is depicted as pure evil and Lincoln is remembered as a superhuman saint. And we are seeing signs of this already in the banning of Confederate flags all across the South and in the pathetic apologies of white Southern politicians on historical and racial issues. If previously the Civil War was seen as a great national tragedy that however preserved the Union and ended slavery, it is now being revised as a great triumph of Good over Evil. Jews would have us believe in it as the Other ‘Good War’. The fact that one bunch of whites killed another bunch of whites so pleases the Jew. The notion of whites slaughtering other whites in the name of ‘higher morality’ is great news to the Jew for it means that whites can be conditioned to choose some abstract moral ideal over their own kind. A black would never kill another black for a white man, and a Jew would never kill a Jew for a gentile. But Jews love the fact that whites will kill other whites for non-whites.
I must say, though, it is kinda amusing to see the Republican Party, the force that defeated the South, wrapping itself today with Confederate sentiments, though with the rise of the neocons, the GOP could be called the party of Neocon-federacy than Neo-Confederacy.
GOP, the party of Lincoln appealing to the people of Jefferson Davies. But, the political shift in the GOP was maybe not all that surprising given that so much of politics is racial. Regardless of ideology and history, Anglo-Americans in the North and Anglo-Americans in the South ― as well as those in the West ― came to bond more closely together as the social make-up of America changed. Though divided by ideology when Anglo-Americans had dominance over all in the 19th century, once Anglo-American share of population and power began to dwindle, Anglo-Americans of all stripes began to come together. Thus, Anglo-Americans who feared Negroes in the South could understand Anglo-Americans who feared massive immigration in the North, and they could understand Anglo-Americans in the West who feared Mexicans and Asians. And in time, non-Anglo white immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe became ‘Anglonistic’ and came to share some of Anglo-American values, interests, and ‘prejudices’. Jews, fearing that white ethnics would become ‘Anglonistic’ and join with the Anglo-American-dominated GOP, did everything in their power to drive all sorts of wedges among the white populace ― war between sexes, generation gap, anti-war fervor, Civil Rights, and etc. And through their control of media and academia, Jews came to mold the minds of white elites who now work against the interests of their own people ― like Billy Boy Clinton celebrating the fact that whites will be a minority in future America. But, much of the blame must also fall on Anglo-American conservatives who, in their sheer lack of creativity, produced little of lasting cultural value in the past 50 yrs. (The history of Western Civilization since the end of the Second World War has essentially been one of white gentiles going out of their way to accommodate themselves to Jewish Power out of a perverse mix of sympathy, guilt, fear, anxiety, admiration, hope, and worship. There are so many paradoxes in this relationship. For example, Jews privately know that philosemitism is as irrational as antisemitism. Might not a philo-Semite who irrationally loves everything Jewish turn into a anti-Semite who hates everything Jewish? After all, irrationality is, by nature, unstable and radioactive. So, the mindless worship of Jews actually makes Jews leery of philosemites. Philosemites love and worship Jews based on the holy, saintly, lovable, funny, and/or brilliant image of the Jew disseminated by the Jewish-controlled mass media, but the fact is most powerful Jews up close are among the biggest a**holes in the world. So, Jews worry about the goyim waking up and seeing the real Jew behind the mask. Similarly, the Magic Negro is a media creation. No such creature exists in reality. MLK himself was really a low-life punk and thug. The reason why so many white liberals are nuts about the Magic Negro is because they lack knowledge of real blacks, or they only know the better kind of blacks who emulate, at least halfway, white standards. Jews know that philosemitism is a kind of irrational madness based on the delusional view of Jews as eternally holy victims and saints. Such mindlessness can be reversed overnight. After all, the mindlessly anti-American Japanese during WWII suddenly became the mindlessly pro-American Japanese after the war. The Japanese masses were never taught to think rationally as individuals and therefore could be swayed this way or that way. They could be cheering the bombing of Pearl Harbor one day and then be cheering American G.I.’s passing out chocolate bars the next day. It’s like the guy in the movie BREAKING AWAY. Initially, he’s a mindless and irrational Italo-phile out of his admiration for Italian cyclists. Because Italy has great racers, he assumes everything about Italy and Italians must be great. But then, when Italian cyclists treat him like shit, he goes in the opposite direction and loses his interest in everything Italian. Similarly, Ian Buruma went to Japan as a starry-eyed Japanophile but then came to feel personally betrayed by the Japanese for having failed to live up to his ideal of them; to be sure, instead of turning into an extreme anti-Japanite, he was careful to lay out rational reasons for his growing distaste for the Japanese; even so, what had once been a great love turned into a great dislike if not exactly a hatred. Given that a great irrational love can morph into a great irrational dislike or even hatred, the more mindlessly the goyim worship the Jews, the more nervous the Jews feel about goyim. Does this mean that Jews would like goyim to become rational individuals? After all, if most goyim could think on their own, they would neither be extreme antisemites nor extreme philosemites. So, wouldn’t Jews feel safer with such people? No, and why not? Because Jews know that if most goyim were to think as rational and honest individuals, the latter would eventually come to speak truth to Jewish power. In any just social order, it’s only natural for those with the most power to come under the most scrutiny since their actions and agenda have more consequences. Since Jews are the most powerful and the wealthiest people in America and the world, they don’t want to come under any such scrutiny. They don’t want their power to be challenged in any way. Thus, Jews have come to be paranoid about everything. They fear the irrationality of philosemitism that might veer mindlessly into antisemitism, but they also fear rationalism for it might lead to more Americans questioning and challenging the immense power, influence, and wealth of Jews. When American conservatives mindlessly suck up to Jews, Jews feel three emotions: appreciation, contempt, and anxiety. Appreciation for the support; contempt for the dog-like servility, especially from a people who had once been so proud and great; and anxiety over the mindlessness of it all since the minds of the mindless can be changed overnight, e.g. the people in MEET JOHN DOE fall for the populist shtick overnight but then turn against it just as quickly. So, when American conservatives like Michelle Bachman or Rick Santorum suck up to Jews in the most mindless way, Jews feel kind of icky. And Jews also notice how the supposed goy sympathy for Jews-as-victims can be heartless and cold at the same time, i.e. conservative support for Zionism premised on the notion of Jews as historical victims is utterly blind to the suffering of Palestinians. So, the absolute lack of sympathy for Palestinians, a deeply wronged people, on the part of American conservatives is as worrying as assuring to Jews. It’s assuring because it means great sympathy and support for Jews. But if American conservatives can be so heartless and unfeeling toward a people as the tragic as the Palestinians, who’s to say Jews won’t be the Palestinians of tomorrow? Indeed, Jews were the Palestinians of yesterday. When so many Jews were crying out for help during WWII, most American conservatives were as uncaring about Jews as they are today of Palestinians. Just as most American conservatives today have the attitude of “Let Jews do as they wish to Palestinians”, most American conservatives had the attitude of “Let Germans do as they wish to Jews in Europe. It’s not our business.” So, ironies abound in history. Jews, who’d suffered and been neglected as Palestinians are today, are now the oppressors of Palestinians. And American conservatives, who are trying to atone for their sin of silence about Jewish suffering during WWII, are now silent about the suffering of Palestinians.
American conservatives didn’t care if Serbians slaughtered Albanians in Kosovo either. My personal view on such matters is neither dogmatically liberal nor conservative. As a general policy, I’m for non-intervention in most problem areas of the world because they are likely to turn into quagmires and may even make things worse. But having human concern about horrors around the world and trying to do something through diplomacy, constructive aid, and on occasion even military intervention ― never unilaterally but with the cooperation of other nations ― are, I think, part of what makes us human. The only people I don’t really care about are the damn Negroes. In THE WILD BUNCH, when Angel is accused of theft by Mapache’s men, Dutch says to Mapache, “He’s a thief. You take care of him” and rides away. He acted on realpolitik and saved himself. He could then have gone off safely with his gold and not bothered about Angel. But would it have been moral? Dutch feels he has to do the right thing and try to save Angel. On the other hand, the Bunch’s attempt at interventionism to save Angel doesn’t go so well either and many more people are killed as a result. The crazy logic of moral interventionism can be seen in BLACK HAWK DOWN: the more the Marines try to save one of their own from African savages, the more they widen the scope of the battle. Anyway, there is something heartless in the conservative heartiness toward the Jews. It’s a sympathy that conceals an inhumanity. In the name of supporting Jews as the Eternal Victim, Americans turn a blind eye to the oppression of truly powerless Palestinians under the iron heel of powerful Jews. Also, Jews probably wonder if American conservative love for Jews is sincere. If most ordinary American conservatives mindlessly side with Jews, Jews probably sense that many white gentile elites express support more out of fear than anything else. Goy elites know that Jewish Power is Real Power and in order to win approval from that power, they must pretend that Jews are powerless and in need of sympathy. For this reason, Power Dynamics in the West today is possibly the most surreal that ever existed. When the Brits, French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, and Anglo-Americans held great power, they said so and were open about it. But Jews, even as the most powerful people in the world, stingily conceal their power and ask, “Power? What power?” The former slave now rules as the master but still plays the slave while the former master who now serves as a slave pretends he’s still the master. Since Jews are anxious about both irrationalism at the core of philosemitism and rationalism that might intelligently challenge Jewish power, Jews try to play divide-and-rule with irrationalism and rationalism among goyim. Fearful that excessive irrationalism might explode into anti-Jewish madness, Jews lay out an argument for a rational understanding of history based on facts and free discourse. Thus, gentiles are taught to think with clear and balanced minds than falling for paranoid conspiracy theories about Jews. But when the rationalist discussion of facts and historical truths veer into areas troubling to Jewish power ― such as Jewish role in Medieval slavery, Jewish role in communism, Jewish role in finance capitalism, Jewish role in porn, Jewish role in white slavery, Jewish role in organized crime, Jewish role in subversion, etc. ― , then Jews drum up the forces of irrationalism and go into witch-hunt mode and demand that the heads of all those who dare to question Jewish virtue and Jewish power to be rolled. We are supposed to believe that Jews have the power to fire and blacklist their ‘enemies’ because, well, Jews have no power. Nixon’s ‘enemies list’ was nothing compared to the ones held by the likes of ADL, $PLC, and Jew York Times. It can’t get any more surreal than that, and yet most Americans just go along like the dummies that they are. In their own way, most Americans are no less brainwashed than the Germans under the Nazis and Chinese under Mao. They seem unable to add 2 + 2 and figure out the answer is not 5. To most Americans, the answer is whatever Jews tell them what it is. According to Jews, 2 + 2 = 6 million Jews killed by evil anti-Semites. Jews publish rational and scholarly tomes on the Holocaust but also employ scare-movies like SCHINDLER’S LIST. Thus, Jews distrust both rationalism and irrationalism on the part of the goyim and seek to play the goy’s irrationality against his rationality and vice versa. And so, the goyim are in a perpetual state of limbo, with their brains and hearts being batted around back and forth like balls in a tennis game played by Jews. It’s a game that never ends because the goyim must be made to feel permanently unsure of themselves. There is a paradox at the core of the Jewish agenda to achieve the permanence of Jewish power, and in a way, Trotsky understood this through his concept of ‘permanent revolution’. An ideal revolution is supposed to create a new order of justice and stability, a new world of peace. But according to Trotsky, a different kind of revolution was necessary. Even with the arrival of communism, there would be new battles, new problems, new conflicts, and new revolutions within the revolution. This is the Jewish approach to power, which is why they’re so restless, energized, committed, fanatical, and virulent. In contrast, Anglo-Americans foolishly rested on their laurels when they thought they had the power, as if it would always remain with them. The conqueror who rested lost to the conman who never could. In a way, Jews learned the advantage of restlessness from their own religious history. Though the official dogma of the Old Testament would have us believe in the All-Powerful God, the truth is that God faded ever more in the narrative as the Hebrew tribe became more and more active. Even in the beginning, God created the world in seven days and then rested. He thinks He’s created paradise and takes it easy, but then, the serpent, man, and woman do not rest; they are curious and eat from the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge. God punishes the serpent, Adam, and Eve. And later, God gets angry from time to time and punishes mankind even more. Even so, God was bound to lose to man because God prefers to rest than be restless. God wants to believe in the permanence of things. He wants to believe that He created the perfect world , allowing Him to sit back, take it easy, and enjoy. But it turns out that the mankind that He created will not rest. Mankind is always up to something, and it drives God crazy. God becomes the straight man to the Hebrews who are like the restless Marx Brothers. Mankind, especially Jews, won’t just shut up and obey God but must always find something to do, often against the dictates of God. God favors the Jews, but Jews are the most problematic people on Earth. Though Jews pretend to worship God, they keep doing stuff to gain greater power for themselves. Eventually, Jews become more powerful than God just like American Jews became more powerful than Anglo-Americans. But, just as Jews kept pretending to be humble servants of God, American Jews keep pretending to be just a small minority in an all-powerful White America. God lost to Jews because He wished to rest after having created the world while Jews never lost their restlessness. Anglo-Americans, after conquering and settling America, wanted to sit back and rule as the natural elites of America, and this mind-set made them take things for granted. They took their power and privilege as a given, and it was only a matter of time that they would be overthrown by the restless and more intelligent Jews. In a way, it was a variation of how the restless bourgeoisie came to take power from the monarchs and aristocrats who were raised to take their power for granted. Those hungry for power will eventually beat those satiated with the vanity of power. This is why Jews want their kids to feel powerless even as Jews are powerful: Once Jewish kids grow up feeling all-powerful, they too might take their power for granted and become complacent, ‘generous’, and filled with moral doubt as to whether their power is really deserved or a positive force in the world. There were two kinds of revolutions against the monarchy/aristocracy: the bloody and the bloodless. In the French and Russian revolutions, the kings and noblemen were massacred. In England, the monarchy and aristocracy were allowed to remain but increasingly as powerless symbols as the real power went to the bourgeoisie. Anglo-Americans, the conqueror-founder-settlers of America, became like the aristocratic class of America, and they were eventually sidelined by the Jewish bourgeoisie. If Jewish communists killed the elites of Russia, American Jews struck a bargain with Anglo-American elites. The latter would keep their ‘titles’ and ‘honorifics’, but they would no longer have real power and would take orders from the new Jewish elites. Thus, most American politicians are really no more powerful than the Queen of England. They are puppets of Jews and increasingly of gays, the favorite allies of Jews, which is why conservatives will also come around to ‘gay marriage’ sooner or later. It’s all very pathetic. Even as the office of the presidency has become more powerful, the actual presidents have become more powerless as they must take orders from their Jewish masters. Many conservatives have a right to be pissed by RINOS like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, but they must also understand that politics is about power. Politicians must pander to those with the money and power. Most American conservatives don’t have much power, influence, or money. Since politicians need the backing of elite influence and elite money to win, they must be whores to the most powerful people in America who happen to be none
other than the Jews. If people like Pat Buchanan had tremendous money and power while Jews had very little, most politicians would be sucking up the likes of Buchanan and ignoring Jews. So, the problem isn’t only that Republican politicians have failed to serve the values and ideals of most conservatives but that most conservatives have failed to make the kind of money and gain the kind of influence that could make a difference in politics. Politicians play to win and they need the backing of winners. Most American conservatives are ‘losers’ and have little to offer to politicians. Why does Obama pander to Jews, white liberals, and gays than to blacks? Because he knows where the money and influence is. Thus, what Romney’s doing is no different from what Obama’s been doing. If American conservatives wanna make a difference, they must win as businessmen, scientists, innovators, intellectuals, artists, entertainers, and etc. But how much talent is there on the American Right? Precious little. Anyway, consider the paradoxes inherent in the Jewish study of history to secure their power. In a way, one could say THE JEWISH LESSON IS THE JEWISH MISTAKE, i.e. there’s a circular logic in how the Jewish attempt to stamp out antisemitism gives birth to antisemitism. By this I mean the more Jews try to create an anti-Jewish world based on lessons from their past, the more they lay the grounds for the next great round of antisemitism. Thus, the lesson itself becomes the mistake. For example, Jews have learned from Nazism that goy power in a homogeneous nation united in pride can be dangerous to Jews. Thus, Jews have been working overtime to make US and EU more multi-racial and interracist. But there’s a great risk in this. Maybe Jews will succeed ― and at this point, it seems as though the white race is deracinated and conquered ― , but maybe they won’t. Maybe white goyim will finally awaken to what the Jews are really up to. And maybe Jews, in their agenda to destroy the white race, have only given legitimacy to Nazi claims about the Jews. Jews would have us believe that the Nazis were utterly paranoid and crazy for their theories on Jewish power, but all around the world today, much of what Hitler said about Jews is proving to be true. This doesn’t mean Hitler was a good guy or that everything about Nazism was good , but there’s no escaping the fact that Jews are indeed a vile, hideous, and hostile people who will subvert, undermine, and destroy any race, culture, or nation for their own advantage. But Jews are not doing this only for power but out of sadism. The Jew takes delight in seeing the white man reduced to a deracinated white boy who pathetically whanks off to the sight of a muscled Negro banging his wife. Jews giggle and cackle with joy as they watch the footage of Jack Johnson whupping Jim Jeffries or Joe Louis pummeling Max Schmeling. Jews love the sight of a pussboy like Ken Burns who raises his kids to be racially suicidal liberal freaks. Both Ken Burns and Jonathan Demme would love nothing more than to have every white man be a fruitcake and every white girl have sex/babies with Negroes. Though Nazis were extreme and hideous, the likes of Ken Burns and Jonathan Demme are sickening in their own way. If times remain good, most white people may be too zonked out on pop culture to notice what’s going on. But if the economy fails and social tensions increase as the result of out-of-control ‘diversity’, there may be a chance for the white race to regain its pride during hard times and rise up against the hideous Jew and teach him a lesson he will never ever forget. And once the Jew is defeated, the motto of the white race should be NEVER EVER AGAIN. Never ever let Jews take elite control of one’s nation. In its perverse brilliance, the Jewish elite is unlike any that ever existed in history. All throughout history, elites favored stability over instability for obvious reasons. If you’re on top, you don’t want the foundations of your kingdom or empire to tremble and bring down the entire system. The people ― or more accurately the control of the people ― are the foundations of any civilization. If the people go along with the system and obey, the elites at the top feel safe and sound. If the people began to get out of control and shake like an earthquake, the elite tower of power will crumble and fall. It’s like the story of SAMSON AND DELILAH where Samson killed off the entire Philistine elite by knocking down the pillars. If the Greek Atlas held up the sky, the Hebrew Samson knocked down the support system of the goy palace; it goes to show that even a Jewish musclehead like Samson was smart enough to know the laws of physics. Anyway, elites have traditionally wanted a stable social order so they could remain perched at the top. This is why elites have generally favored conservatism or continuity. Of course, the elites could be tempted by ambition or anger to conquer more territory and expand their empire, but such risky undertaking was meant to consolidate greater power in the long run. In modern times, especially with the rise of the bourgeoisie, the concept of the elites changed from that of continuity to creativity. If kings and aristocrats had expected their descendants to rule across centuries or even millennia, the capitalist elites knew that no such continuity would be assured in the modern world. Just because a man happens to be rich and intelligent doesn’t ensure that his children will be as successful. His children might inherit his wealth and live well, but the real giants of tomorrow would arise from other super-intelligent and super-driven people. Even so, for the ideal of meritocracy to remain functional in modern society, the elites understood the need for a stable order based on Rule of Law and Rule of Virtue. If the masses acted like wild-ass jigger-jivers, there would be no Rule of Law and no Rule of Virtue, and society would crumble like post-Apartheid South Africa. So, in one way or another, the elites, old and new, favored some form of stability and continuity, whether such be political, social, cultural, demographic, legal, and/or ethical. But, things are different with the Jewish elites. If almost all elites have associated some form of stability with their power, Jews see stability as a problem. When Jews think of stability and order, they think of the Germany of National Socialism where orderly and united Germans stood up against the Jews. Or they think of Stalinist Russia where the communized goyim eventually rose up against Jews. It’s no wonder that Trotsky favored the ideal of ‘permanent revolution’ and ‘international communism’. Once the dust settled and Russia became stable, the goyim would come to notice that Jewish communists owned the nation. In order to divert the attention of dimwit Russians from the fact of Jewish power, Trotsky instinctively sought to inflame their minds with fantasies of foreign enemies and more ‘creative’ revolutions to be concocted by Jews. Jewish liberals and neocons in America think likewise. They constantly find new crises, causes, and enemies in order to divert the attention of Americans from the fact of Jewish power. Thus, idiot Americans get all passionate about nonsense such as ‘gay marriage’, ‘vagina monologues’ and ‘vagina marches’, and fantastic fears of evil Muslims, Chinese, and Russians. Though Jews no longer believe in the Marxist ideology of Trotsky, they still practice the Jewish strategy of Trotsky. Jews fear stability because it will clear the water in the aquarium. Once the water is clear, we can look through it and see the truth. What is the truth? JEWS CONTROL THE WEST. So, Jews wanna keep stirring and muddying up the water with ‘gay marriage’, ‘racism’ and ‘inequality’ ― rather amusing since Jews are the most unequally privileged people in America ― , and with fears about ‘Muzzies’, ‘chinks’, and ‘Russkies’. So, the current West controlled by the Jews doesn’t go for stability. If anything, Jews have even engineered an open borders policy to flood the West with migrants and immigrants from the Third World. Jews want more ‘diversity’ in order to play divide-and-rule among the goyim. But, this isn’t to say Jews are for instability either. After all, if the entire system collapses, even the Jews will be in deep doo doo. Why have so many Jews left South Africa? Because things got too crazy. If all of US were to collapse like Detroit, then goyim of all stripes are gonna turn barbaric and go after rich Jews. So, Jews are afraid of instability too. So, what are the Jews after? Just as Jews try to balance irrationality and rationality on the part of the goyim, Jews are experimenting with juggling stability and instability to control the goyim. Too much stability might favor the majority goy group, and so Jews try to undermine stability by increasing diversity and vulgarity that lead to greater tension among goyim. Jews also try to divide goyim by promoting issues like radical feminism that divides goy males and goy females, the gay agenda that divides liberals and conservatives, and mindless youth culture that divides the generations. By creating such divisions and instability, Jews ensure that the goy majority will never form into a united power. Jews want to turn white goyim against their own parents and their own kind. Jews want educated white professionals to laugh at ugly vulgar stuff like CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and want dumb white trash to laugh at Howard Stern and Jerry Springer. By promoting shameless cultural vulgarity, Jews reduce white folks into tards and animals. Even educated white girls today whine and bitch about ‘slut pride’ and ‘vagina power’. But there can’t be much racial or individual pride in such trashiness. White goy idiots may feel ‘empowered’ by only as disgusting animals without dignity, and thus, they are easily controlled
by Jews who need only push a few buttons ― like in lab experiments with animals ― to make trashy white goyim feel this or that way. On the other hand, such vulgarity leads to uninhibited aggression and barbarism, which means goyim of all color may feel tempted to blurt out whatever that happens to pop into their minds, and sometimes it happens to be ‘racist’, ‘homophobic’, ‘antisemitic’, and ‘misogynist’. That’s when instability of vulgarity is TOO MUCH for the Jews, and so Jews use the hammer of Political Correctness to shame such ‘hateful expressions’. So, Jews reduce goyim into vulgar barbarians but then tame/lobotomize/castrate the barbarian-beasts with Tolerance. So, Jews want goyim to be reduced to animals obsessed with sex, vulgarity, and trashiness ― barbarian hedonists of the penis, vagina, and stomach addicted to pop culture controlled by Jews ― but also to be whipped by and leashed to Political Correctness. It’s like THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. The wicked doctor, by turning men into brutal beasts, gains intellectual power over them; it’s easier to manipulate childlike beasts than free-thinking adults; but then, animals can be dangerous too, and so Moreau uses certain secretive controls to keep them in line. Some yrs ago, a British girl got in trouble in Reality TV by saying ‘racist’ things about an Asian-Indian lady. The problem wasn’t that she talked and acted like vulgar trash. THAT was cool and encouraged. The problem was her barbarism veered into politically incorrect territory.
Jewish elites want to ‘liberate’ us from old repressions that are associated with the power of the traditional goy elites. Jews want goyim to believe that before Jews and Negroes liberated them with filthy comedy and raw sexuality, white goyim had all been repressed slaves of white male goy patriarchy. Thus, this ‘liberation’ toward barbarism is prized by Jews for having torn the masses of goyim away from the cultural/moral power of traditional goy elites. But, barbarism has its own logic. Negro rappers often howl about Jewish mothafuc*az and ‘faggots’. Don Imus, a shock jock, joked about ‘nappy headed hos’. This is when the barbaric energy of the goyim, originally unleashed by Jews to be used against the traditional goy elites, may come to boomerang on the Jews and their allies. Thus, Jews want the goyim to be vulgarized and infantilized but also to be prodded, nudged, or punished to not venture beyond prescribed boundaries. So, a white girl can act like a slut, talk trashy, pierce her entire face, have ape-like sex with Negroes, and act like a total retard 24/7, but she can’t not say anything that might be construed as ‘antisemitic’, ‘racist’, or ‘homophobic’. Jews are trying to turn goyim into tamed barbarians or domesticated animals, i.e. turn the white goyim into barbarian beasts who will no longer obey the traditional white elites but then castrate and leash them so they won’t ever attack Jews. Sack Rome but obey the Jews and gays. It’s like Jewish Hollywood used Arnold Schwarzenegger, who often played the barbarian warrior but in the service of politically correct goals. The one exception was when he starred in John Milius’s original CONAN THE BARBARIAN where he was an unapologetic ‘Aryan’ muscle man who fought and slayed a Negro giant. If there is ONE THING that the Jewish elite insists must be shared by all races, all sides, and all groups, it is the worship of the Jew. Thus, liberals and conservatives may be divided on ‘gay marriage’, but they are agreed on Israel. They may be divided on regulation of Wall Street, but they are agreed on NEVER BLAMING JEWS FOR THE FINANCIAL FIASCO. Whatever the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ may disagree on, both must kiss the Jewish ass, lick the Jewish toe, and suck the Jewish cock. So, even as Jews increase instability in so many areas of society, they forge a new stability based on a coercive universal commandment to obey, honor, and worship Jews. The result has been that both white liberals and white conservatives care more about Jews ― both in the West and in Israel ― than about their own race, their own people, their own culture, their own ancestors, and their own kids. Even the most patriotic American white goy parent will sacrifice his kids by having them go fight Wars for Israel.) Anyway, the alpha-male/beta-male dynamic in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is quite striking. There was nothing new about a Western in which few gunmen tower above other men who are mostly sheep. In SHANE for example, the ONLY man who can really stand up to the Jack Palance character is Shane(Alan Ladd)himself. And in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, the entire town freezes whenever Liberty Valance(Lee Marvin) rides into town. And even within the Valance gang, Valance is the top dog while his partners are mere toadies. Only the John Wayne character has the guts to stand up to Valance. And in HIGH NOON, the entire town is paralyzed with fear and won’t come to the aid of Will Clark(Gary Cooper). Was the real West really like this? Were most men really such helpless scaredy-cat sheep or was it just a Western genre staple to heighten the conflict between the good guy and the bad guy?
Given the context of lawlessness in many Westerns, why are most characters so afraid to take the law into their own hands? If good folks outnumber bad folks, and if there isn’t much in the way of Law enforcement around, why don’t good people all get guns and shoot the bad guys? Why do they cower? And who says they have to face the bad guys face-to-face? Why not just shoot the vermin in the back? In Westerns at least, it seems as though many good folks choose ‘not to get involved’ because the reputation may follow them around, and others may come after them out of vengeance or to make their own reputation. If YOU kill a famous outlaw ― if your killing of the outlaw makes you famous through legends, rumors, songs, and tall-tales ― , then you become the king of the hill, attracting both admirers(who may hire you to do more killing) or competitors(who wanna lay claim to being the new king of the hill, and indeed that was the premise of the Spaghetti Western MY NAME IS NOBODY). Once you’re tagged with a reputation, it’s difficult to lead a peaceful quiet life. You become a legend and have to live up to that legend or die trying. In the Old West, the gunman was like the rock star, and his guitar was his pistol. If you shot a famous person, the sound of gunfire echoed through stories, lyrics, and legends. Some people, like Billy the Kid, basked in that kind of notoriety while others feared being the center of attraction for it could invite an early death. (Given the cowering nature of most white folks under the power of political correctness, maybe it’s not so difficult to understand why most ‘good folks’ in Westerns chose to do nothing. Back then as is now, most people prefer to cower before power. The Will to Cower is real for the fact that cowards have a better chance of surviving than would-be heroes. Cowardice is one of the products of evolution. The flight mechanism is as essential as the fight mechanism. Indeed, mankind ― at least Europeans and especially East Asians ― became less violent and aggressive because many more cowards survived to breed than did the warriors. Warriors acted big and tough, and many of them got killed in battle. Warriors might rule over cowards, but they also did the fighting and many died. In SEVEN SAMURAI, almost all the bandits die and four out of seven warriors die, but most peasant men live on and will have kids. Also, warrior elites come to favor cowards over heroes. While warrior elites may recruit and favor tough courageous men for the military, they want MOST MEN to remain obedient and docile. In primitive society, almost all men were raised to be hunter-warriors, and so there was no place for cowards or cowerers. But in a civilization, the duties of men are specialized. There is a warrior caste, but it makes up only a small part of the overall population. Most other men must be docile peasants, workers, serfs, slaves, helots, or what-have-you. Warrior elites prefer those men to be beta-male cowerers. Paradoxically, though cowerers must live under the iron heel of the warrior elite, they may actually win out genetically in the long term. Whereas tough warriors go into battle and die in huge numbers at a young age, even serfs and slaves may be able to settle down and have children. Also, warriors are supposed to fight for their side and only their side. If their side loses, they are supposed to die in battle or kill themselves in shame. But peasants can serve any side. If Greeks occupied a domain, the peasants worked for Greeks. If Persians took over the domain, the peasants worked for Persians. During WWII, many tough German and Japanese soldiers died in battle. And good many committed suicide in the name of honor as their sides lost. But ordinary German and Japanese folks went on living under new masters: Americans or Russians. To be sure, the division of men isn’t really that simple in a civilization. We must take into consideration the cowerriors, or cowerer-warriors who were physically tough but mentally cowering before their masters. The Nazi ideal was to create an army of men who were tough in battle but had no individual will of their own. Same was true of the Japanese samurai. As wars became more organized, individual heroism counted for less than group-coordination and disciplined obedience. Also, as the warrior caste turned into the noble aristocratic class, it got all fancy-pantsy than ruffian-ish. They married refined dainty ladies with gentle manners, and so their children often turned out to be pansy-like, which probably explains why so many French and British upper-class males became tinkery-winkery. Also, as the powerful got a taste for fancy things, they came to rely more on gay experts in fashion, design, decorum, and manners; thus, gayness, though sexually in the closet, came to culturally influence so much of upper-crust culture. Some might say this had a kind of civilizing impact on the warrior caste. Prior to being gay-ized, the warrior elites got angry real fast like Uther and Duke of Cornwall in the opening scenes of EXCALIBUR and bashed heads over stupid shit. But as their manners improved under the influence of gayishness, they battled more with wit and manners than growling and head-bashing. Instead of clobbering someone with a hammer, the aggrieved took off his glove and slapped the offender. And the glove-slapped guy, instead of growling and going for the other guy’s throat, requested a duel, a refined and mannered form of violence carried out with proper etiquette. Though we now think of dueling as barbaric, it might have been a move toward higher civility in the sense that aristocrats were expected to fight with fairness and honor than growling, ear-biting, and eye-gouging barbarism. Given the gay influence on aristocratic culture ― and the privileged role of gays in today’s society ― , it’s ironic that the gay agenda justifies itself in the name of ‘equality’. Actually, it’s about neo-aristocratism. It means gays can violate the rules of marriage and still get ‘married’ on their own terms. This isn’t equality but highfalutin fancy-pants privilege. Anyway, cowering is somewhat different from the ‘flight’ mechanism among animals. In the fight-or-flight dynamic, an animal must choose to fight and stand its ground ― and maybe kill the enemy ― or take flight and run like a mothafuc*a.. Cowering is psychologically related to flight, but there are also crucial differences. In a way, it’s more like fight-or-unite in the case of the cowering mechanism. The cowerer is choosing to unite with the winner but as an underling. As an underling, it loses its dignity and must suck up to the big boss. But it also wins protection from the big boss and a certain degree of collective pride. Even if the underling hasn’t much individual pride, he may feel pride as being part of the larger team. Thus, if a nation wins a war, even the biggest wimps of the nation feel like winners as they too are members of the community. Some animals have the Will to Cower built into their genes. It is what allows wolves to form into packs, and it is what allowed some wolves to choose new masters in humans and evolve into dogs. Humans feel closest to dogs emotionally because of our common nature of the Will to Cower. Though we like to credit the Will to Power as the Promethean visionary ruthlessness that gave rise to civilization and fueled its progress, the Will to Cower has been just as crucial to civilization since order and obedience among the masses were necessary for the elites to rule over a large domain. Africans, who grew up in primitive societies, developed less of a tendency for Will to Cower since all males were raised to be warrior-hunters hungry for individual glory. Africans were utterly violence-and-sex obsessed. A woman could ‘sue’ for divorce if her man didn’t satisfy her. Then, the tribal elders would watch the man hump his wife to determine if indeed he wasn’t stud enough. If he was deemed inadequate, he would be humiliated and lose his wife. If he was deemed adequate, he could beat the shit out of his wife. African culture was about hump-and-stump, and we can hear the essence of the Negro soul in rap music. Given this nastiness, we would think most whites, Mexicans, Arabs, and Asians would hate Negroes and rap culture. Though many non-blacks do indeed hate blacks up close ― what with all the crime and shit ― , many of them are also obsessed with black culture for the paradoxical reason that beta-male cowerers need alpha male warriors to cower before. Beta-male cowerers may resent the power and charisma of alpha male warriors, but they also wanna bow down before alpha-male-warrior power just like beta wolves bow down before alpha wolves and like dogs bow down before humans. Even geeks and dorks get excited when they watch sports games. Jewish geeks are amongst the biggest fans of Negro basketball players. There could be a certain degree of ‘leapfrogging’ ― fixing one’s sympathies and/or loyalties on things or people outside of one’s own group ― in this worship of alpha male worship, i.e. the beta-male cowerer who resents the immediate alpha-male warrior may romanticize the distant alpha-male warrior. Suppose there’s an all-white highschool where some liberal beta-male dork is picked on by big tough conservative alpha-male warriors. Just because the liberal beta-male dork resents his immediate alpha-male tormentors doesn’t mean that he doesn’t wish to cower before the alpha-male warrior-hood itself; rather, he wishes that the alpha-male warrior didn’t act like such an a**hole and, therefore, fantasizes about noble and magical black alpha male warriors whupping the ass of nasty white alpha male warriors and coming to the rescue of the liberal beta-male dork. Indeed, this is the narrative that’s been embraced and pushed by Jews: the notion that helpless and decent Jews were
crushed and oppressed by nasty ‘Aryan’ alpha male warriors, but then, the wonderful and noble black alpha male warriors in the form of Jesse Owens and Joe Louis taught the nasty white supremacist alpha male a**holes a lesson in humility. Thus, Jews replaced ‘Aryanism’ with ‘Afro-Aryanism’. Most people liked to be ruled. They may reject one boss but they want a new boss. This is why many Ukrainians welcomed Germans as liberators when the Wehrmacht drove out the Soviets; of course, Ukrainians soon enough discovered Nazis were no better, but that’s another story. Many white people who couldn’t stand the ‘tyrant’ George W. Bush prostrated themselves before messiah-emperor Obama. They didn’t get rid of one king to be free but to be ruled by another king. Whatever cult following Ron Paul has, his kind will never win in a national election because of the reality of the Will to Cower. Most people want to cower before something. Most white people are domesticated animals who want a sheep-herder to guide and protect them, and most blacks are wild animals who want zookeepers to feed them. They don’t want to be allowed to go free since they fear fending for themselves. Consider the irony within the Ayn Randian community itself. Randians pretend to be individualistic and free-thinking, and yet, they all cower before Ayn Rand as the great guru, the ultimate genius with answers for everything. Of course, not all cowering is of the same kind. Also, getting beaten is not the same thing as cowering. A person or people can get beat but still remain defiant and not cower. Or, even if they cower, they could only be pretending to cower while preparing for an eventual Will to Power. Usually, the beaten or submissive side will cower sincerely to the powerful or victorious side IF the former perceives the latter to be genuinely great and superior. For example, suppose you belong to a race where most people have an IQ of 90 and are five feet tall; suppose your race comes under the domination of another race that is six feet tall and have an IQ of 120. You will likely see the ruling race as superior and cower before it sincerely. But suppose you belong to a race where the IQ is 115 but have to cower before a race whose IQ is 100. Since the latter outnumber you and own most weapons, you choose to cower but without sincerity. Your people will patiently conceal their Will to Power and formulate a strategy to take power from the less intelligent race in the long run; and that is what happened with Jews and whites. Jews pretended to cower, but their eyes were not cast downward; even as their heads were bowed, their eyes were looking upward to think of ways to bring down the goyim. Now imagine if you are part of a race that is much stronger than the race that dominates your race. Suppose your race cowers before the weaker race because the latter is more numerous and has all the weapons. But suppose you really despise the ‘faggoty-ass’ soft and flabby race that is holding your race down. Then, your cowering is essentially just for show. It’s not sincere; deep in your heart, you feel the raging Will the Power to whup the flabby-ass mothafuc*a and hump his ho. This was the case between whites and blacks. Though whites enslaved blacks and forced blacks to cower before them, most blacks hoped for the day when they could rise up, flex their muscles, pull out their penises, and whup the white boy and hump the white ho. And that is happening today. Thus, the rule for any people is, IF YOU’RE GONNA USE THE SERVICES OF PEOPLE MORE INTELLIGENT THAN YOURSELVES, MAKE SURE THEY DON’T GAIN CONTROL OF CERTAIN INSTITUTIONS LIKE MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT. AND IF YOU’RE GONNA ENSLAVE A PEOPLE TO DO MANUAL LABOR, MAKE SURE THEY ARE NOT STRONGER THAN YOUR OWN RACE. With the ascent of Jewish Will to Power, Black Will to Power, and Gay Will to Power, what we are seeing more and more is the white gentile Will to Cower. Even American conservative politicians are the biggest cowerers to the Jewish Lobby. And even conservatives suck up to blacks with notions like ‘Hip Hop Republicans’. And conservatives, who used to be vocally anti-gay-agenda, remain silent as one state after another falls under the influence of the Gay Cabal. They all cower before the power. The Blogger Named Ernest came up with proposal called the Blogger-Named-Ernest-Strategy that would directly appeal to white voters, but it won’t work because politics isn’t just about wallets and statistics. It’s about mass psychology, which happens to be shaped and controlled by the media. Consider how ‘gay marriage’ went from a ridiculous fringe issue to THE great civil rights issue of our time. Why? Mass psychology is shaped by mass education and mass media. Though mass education and mass media reach everyone, they are not controlled by everyone but by a small elite made up mostly of Jews and gays. And though there are many educators and journalists, most of them take orders from the elites on top. It’s trickle-down-ideology. If a few ‘social experts’ at Harvard and a few activists at ADL say that something is true or must be done, then it’s only a matter of time before the majority of Americans think it is true or must be done. If most white people thought independently and for their own kind, the Blogger-Named-Ernest Strategy would work. But most whites coweringly seek approval from the masters of education and the media. Even though our schooling stops at the age of 18 or 21, we still carry the educational mind-set for the rest of our lives. Don’t we all look back to highschool or college to recall certain facts, truths, and values? And even though most people don’t know celebrities on a personal basis, in terms of mass psychology, celebrities ― rock stars, movie stars, pop journalists, public intellectuals, comedians, etc. ― have become a part of people’s homes, especially for lonely single people without families. If you’re a single woman, your ‘family’ is Jon Stewart and SEX AND THE CITY. So, even if you don’t know those people personally, you feel they are a part of your close-knit community and so you don’t wanna do anything that might offend them. And the biggest and worst cardinal sin in America is ‘racism’ and by that we mean ‘white racism’, and by that we mean any racial consciousness on the part of whites is ‘racist’. We now have the MLK statue in the D.C. Mall as the Moral Bouncer of America. If you dare think ‘racist’ thoughts, the great soul-prophet’s not gonna let you into the Cool Club defined by Jewish supremacists, gay supremacists, and mulatto supremacists. American conservatives can gripe all they want, but it’s easy to understand why Republican politicians pander to globalist big business, Wall Street, the Zionist Lobby, and even to the Gay Lobby. Though NAACP and La Raza are not winners in and of themselves, GOP must respect them too because they are winners-by-association-with-Jewish-and-gay-power, i.e. if the GOP totally ignores NAACP and La Raza, it will be tagged as ‘racist’ by the Jewish controllers of the media. What Republican politicians do is no different from what most people do. Most people wanna hang around winners than losers. If you make it as a lawyer or doctor, do you wanna hang around other doctors or lawyers or with janitors or truck drivers? If you become a big movie star, do you wanna hang around other stars or around failed actors waiting tables? If you are a gorgeous woman, do you wanna marry a star athlete or an athlete who failed to make it to the pros and works as a grammar school coach? Tom Vu the ‘legendary Asian pimp’ summed it quite succinctly:
“Learn from success, not failure.” Politicians, in order to fulfill their Will to Power, must also practice a Will to Cower before the Real Power that rules America, and that power rests with the Jewish cabal. Republican politicians can also take most conservative ‘losers’ for granted since who else are the ‘losers’ gonna vote for? Conservatives may dislike RINOS but what are the alternatives: the likes of Obama or Hillary. So, conservatives have no choice but to vote for the likes of George W. Bush, McCain, and Romney since the alternatives are Clinton, Kerry, and Obama. So, Republican politicians don’t have to pander much to the conservative masses since the Right’s only option is to vote AGAINST Democrats than FOR any real conservative. Republican message to conservative voters isn’t “We have something for you” but “We aren’t the Democrats”. Also, Republican politicians, like any other kinds of politicians, can make all the promises and then break them. Politicians win not by appealing to the masses of ‘losers’ but by sucking up to elite winners. This sounds counterintuitive since ‘losers’ far outnumber the winners, but the ‘losers’ think and feel as told by the media controlled by winners. Why are 98% of Americans so crazy about Jews and Israel? Why do 70% of young people support ‘gay marriage’? A small number of people at the top control the hearts and minds of the masses.
Most movies, TV shows, documentaries, and journalism aren’t meant to convey the truth but to manipulate mass perception of reality; what had once been an art or calling has been whittled down to a science of mind-control. Take Cass the Ass Sunstein who’s for subliminally ‘nudging’ us toward certain habits and values. The whole gay agenda is highly nudgocratic. Since the essence of gayness ― male sex organ going into a fecal organ ― is disgusting, gay activists try to ‘hide’ and ‘normalize’ gayness by conflating it with things that have nothing to do with gayness, such as rainbow colors and ultra-cleanliness. Gays on TV are like Ken Dolls. You’d think they’re dickless creatures who are more ‘conservative’ than even Mormons in their daily lives. Thus, masses of idiots ― who are most Americans ― are drawn to the gay agenda by the rainbow mirage that hides the fact that gayness is essentially about guys sucking other guys’ penises, acting like insufferable sissy fairy bitches, and inserting the male sex organ into fecal tunnels stained with brown slimy and stinky shit. I suppose in that sense, rainbow somehow works as the symbol of the gay agenda, i.e. the Great Gay Make-Over is cosmetically appealing but totally illusory. Jews and gays know they can prettify anything ― no matter how disgusting ― and uglify anything ― no matter how healthy and normal ― since they control the media. Incidentally and ironically, the Rainbow Gays and Stars-and-Bars Neo-Confederates have one thing in common: they try to cover up the essence of their core conviction or behavior with colorful symbolism. Though the Confederacy during the Civil War was about really about the defense of slavery, Neo-Confederates wave the colorful Stars-and-Bars as if the Southern Cause was really about Pride, Culture, and States’ Rights and as if slavery had almost nothing to do with it. Similarly, gays would have us believe us that being gay is essentially about waving rainbow flags, fashion shows, and gays speaking intellectually on NPR when, in fact, the core of gayness is about a fruitcake sucking another guy’s cock and male sex organs going in and out of fecal holes. It just goes to show the power of symbolism. Anyway, there’s another reason why so many Americans go with Big Media lies. It’s not just a matter of brainwashing or indoctrination but a matter of Will to Cower. Even though most Americans know Big Media is full of lies, they also respect the Big Power of Big Media. It’s like most people know that most Hollywood movies are terrible but still prefer them to smaller movies from around the world because Hollywood is Big and the ‘most happening’ cultural phenomenon around the world. Most people know the Academy Awards Show is shit, but they still watch it because it’s a Big Event. People just like to cower before the Big and Powerful even as they gripe and whine about them. And the great silence and non-action even among hardline rightists and conservatives in America have something to do with their subconscious Will to Cower before the Big Power. Given all the shit that’s happening, proud white people should be organizing marches, raising the temperature, getting angry, and fighting the good fight. But a bunch of illegal aliens are more likely to hold marches and speak up for their ‘rights’ than patriotic white Americans are. On the occasion that a black guy is killed by a white, black leaders organize marches and get all vocal. But there is no such among the white right. There’s so much black-on-white violence, but no white leader comes forth to organize the people or to spread the message. For all their griping on the internet, white male rightists might as well be ‘faggots’ bending over to Jews for they seem incapable of doing anything of real consequence. In a way, the beta-male-ization of the white American man ― and the European man ― has led to mass psy-cuckold-iztion of the white race. White males now not only no longer resist miscegenation of Negro males and white females but welcome it as a kind of honor. If alpha males take pleasure in dominating, beta-males take pleasure in being dominated. Since white males no longer feel as the natural masters over their own women, a part of the white male psyche wishes to offer their women to Negro alpha males as a tribute. Just as beta-male serfs used to bow before their warrior masters and offer up their wives and daughters, beta-male-ized white males psychologically wanna see their women humped by alpha-male blacks. The white race is now an utter disgrace. Sure, white boys, liberal and conservative, can pretend that the socio-sexual changes are all for ‘progress’, ‘fighting racism’, ‘we have come a long way’, and all such trite rot. And white conservative males can pretend to be aloof and above such tawdry matters, but the fact is the white boy has been utterly whupped by Jews, gays, and Negroes, and they’ve lost the most important unity within a people: the sacred bond between men and women. Most white women are now with the Jews, gays, and Negroes. And in time, most white males will be raised as psy-cuckold-ized metro-sexual hipsters or as ‘whiggers’ emulating Eminem, and they’ll accept their lot as beta-male servants of smarter Jews, more creative gays, and more stronger Negroes.) Anyway, if most traditional Westerns presented the alpha-male/beta-male dynamic for dramatic purposes ― preparing the heroic good guy to defeat the fearsome bad guy to save the townsfolk ― , there is an almost a philosophical vision of life in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. In the traditional Western there was the moral injustice of bad alpha males lording over good beta males, who come to rely on good alpha males to defeat the bad alpha males. Thus, there is a selfless quality about good alpha males in the traditional Westerns. They risk life and limb in service of good decent folks who are too afraid or unable to fight for themselves. It’s also a theme of SEVEN SAMURAI.
In contrast, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID accepts the lordship of alpha males ― ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ― over beta males as a cosmic truth. It’s a world of hard men and soft men than good men and bad men. In the traditional western, there’s the good hard men and bad hard men, and the good hard men side with good soft men ― and most soft men are shown as decent ― against the bad hard men. But there’s no such guarantee of goodness in Peckinpah’s universe. In PAT GARRET & BILLY THE KID, most men are sheep, including the gunslingers. Take Billy and his gang. Billy clearly dominates over the other guys. In one scene where Billy returns to his camp after breaking out of prison, he rudely awakens one of his compatriots(Harry Dean Stanton), steals the woman, and makes insulting remarks, but the belittled beta-male just slunkers away with his tail between his legs. Even among outlaws, it seems some call the shots while others make way for the top dog. Billy is chummy with his gang, but he’s not equal with them. He’s clearly the top dog, and his men wait around for him and take their cues from him. He’s a natural leader, and others just follow. It’s complicated somewhat by the fact that while Billy has natural leadership qualities, he’s too laid-back to lead, and so the guy spend most of their time just lying around doing nothing. It’s like the Kristofferson character in CONVOY who says he’s not leading the pack but just happens to be in front. Nature put Billy in front of his men, but he doesn’t know where he wants to go exactly.
The law of alpha male domination operate wherever and whenever and with whomever throughout the film. When Billy breaks out of the prison on Garrett’s turf, none of the law-abiding people do anything to stop him. All the townsfolk are just passive onlookers; a few even lend him a hand in the way a smaller/weaker dog lies down before a bigger/tougher dog. It’s like how most white boys act in the presence of blacks: as pussyboys, and this is as true of conservative as well as liberal white boys. Billy mounts a horse but is thrown off, but he still acts cool and is in command of the situation, and one of the townsfolk leads the horse back to Billy, but Billy just takes the man’s own horse. The man says, “what the hell, Billy?” but protests no further. He, like everyone else, is resigned to the Law of Alpha-Male Domination. It’s like Billy is a natural aristocrat who can do as he pleases, and everyone else must stand around like serfs. (The scene is also notable for what Billy does next. He begins to ride away on the horse but then stops, turns around, and rides back to grab a poncho from an old Mexican. Peckinpah seems to be suggesting two things: [1] Billy is so sure of himself that he’s in no hurry to flee; if he feels the need to ride back to grab an item, he will do so, and he does. [2] The ‘real West’ didn’t play out according to any script. Though it would have been ideal for a ‘heroic’ Billy to get on a horse and ride off in classic Western manner, we first see him fall off a horse, and then we see him forgetting an item and having to ride back to get it. Thus, it seems more ‘accidental’, more naturally ‘blooper-like’.) There’s an irony in Billy’s ‘freedom’ serving as an oppressive force, but Peckinpah fails to do much with it given his mindless romanticization of Billy as a ‘free spirit’. (Was Peckinpah, from the vantage point of beta-male-dom, admiring the macho ‘heroics’ of alpha-male Billy, or was Peckinpah, from the vantage point of his own alpha-male-dom, tipping his hat to Billy as a kindred spirit? A bit of both perhaps? Peckinpah was a strange case, both aggressively alpha-male-ish and sensitively beta-male-ish. BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, his most personal film, is about the ruthless alpha-male fantasies of a sensitive beta-male loser. It’s like Peckinpah’s POINT BLANK.)
What’s true of Billy on Garrett’s turf is also true of Garrett on Billy’s turf. Garrett, like Billy, is feared as an alpha male. So, even those who dislike him dare not stand up to him. Just as the townsfolk of Lincoln ― where Garrett is sheriff ― didn’t lift a finger to stop Billy escaping from prison, Billy’s gang doesn’t do a thing after Garrett’s kills Billy. There’s no revenge, no nothing. They just mope and stand around Billy’s dead body as Garrett departs the next morning. Though they could kill Garrett if they all ganged up on him, no one makes a move. Alphas are not to mess with. Alpha aura isn’t merely physical but psychological. Though most men act like herds, a herd without a leader doesn’t know what to do. When most white men were led by proud white elites, white men organized for white power. But with no proud white elites to lead white men, white guys just hang around and mope like Billy’s gang after his death. It’s like in a school with many whites and few blacks, white kids can unite to fight the blacks but they never do. If blacks attack white kids, white guys don’t unite to fight back. They might have united and fought back in the past when white pride and white leadership were the defining features of the white community. But now, whites are raised to worship MLK/rappers and to never think in terms of leading or uniting for the white cause. So, just as hundreds of wildebeests do nothing to help a wildebeest being killed by lions, hundreds of white kids will do nothing to help a white kid getting whupped by blacks even in a majority white school. Since there’s no unity among whites, white kids feel that if they interfered on behalf of their white friends, they’ll just get their asses whupped next by blacks
One of the film’s main theme’s is something like a mid-life crisis of alpha-maledom. Garrett, an alpha male, is aging and no longer the man he was. Thus, his ‘betrayal’ and hunting down of Billy are a way of testing his alpha-maleness. But in killing Billy, he’s also killing himself, and this aspect of the theme is conveyed through the framing device where a considerably older Garrett is shown being gunned down by the very people with whom he hunted Billy down. The killing of Garrett is juxtaposed with Billy and his gang shooting heads of chickens buried in the ground, and the montage makes it seem as though the men shooting at the chicken are shooting at Garrett. It’s striking but ‘intellectually’ contrived and bit too arty for my taste. It is essentially a variation of what Orson Welles did with the hall-of-mirror shooting scene in LADY FROM SHANGHAI where the crippled Jew lawyer says, “killing you would be killing myself”.
There’s another scene of alpha-male domination when Garrett faces off against Holly(Richard Bright, the man who played Al Neri in THE GODFATHER movies). Holly and two other guys ― Alias(Dylan) and Beaver(Donnie Fritts), the funniest character in the movie who repeats the lines of other guys ― enter a saloon and see Garrett sitting around having a drink. (Beaver is like the ultimate beta-dufus. He can’t even come up with words to say for himself.) Though Garrett is outnumbered three-to-one ― the old saloon keeper(Chill Wills)is also a friend of Billy ― , no one dares to make a move on Garrett. When Garret orders them to ‘come and have a drink’, they do so. When Garrett orders Alias to knock Beaver out with the butt of rifle, Alias does it and then walks over to read the labels of canned goods like Garrett orders him to. (Alias, though a big fan of Billy, is a slippery character, and thus fittingly played by the Jew Dylan. He says he can ‘go anywhere and live anywhere too’. Alias, being Jewishy if not exactly Jewish, is the ultimate adapter, a kind of Zelig-ish character who takes no strong positions but does whatever necessary to fit in. Indeed, after Billy breaks out of prison, Alias is seen with Garrett, possibly as someone wishing to be recruited as deputy. But Garrett just sees him as a dope and ignores him. Later, we see Alias at Billy’s camp along with three other men with a vendetta against Billy. Alias situates himself somewhere between Billy and the three men. Once the shooting begins and Billy’s side gains the upper-hand, Alias throws his knife and kills one of the three men he rode into town with. But what if the three men had gotten the upper-hand in the shooting? Mightn’t Alias have sided with the three men? Though Alias does have genuine fondness for Billy, he’s someone who goes with the winning side and looks for the angles. He’s very Jewishy. The thing about Jewish beta-ness is it’s tactical than submissive. When a gentile beta kisses the toes of an alpha, he means I pledge my loyalty sincerely ― like when Luca Brasi pledges his loyalty to Don Corleone in THE GODFATHER or when Japanese bow down before superiors in samurai movies. But, the apparently beta-Jew feels smarter than the alpha male and only acts ‘weak’ and ‘submissive’ to slowly gain control over the mind of the alpha ― as with the fatfuc* Jewishy ‘Peter Brand’ character in MONEYBALL.) Holly senses Garrett is pushing him into a corner and makes a desperate gamble by pulling out a knife, but Garrett shoots him dead. (It’s a variation of Palance’s killing of the sodbuster in SHANE. By provoking the sodbuster to make the ‘first move’, Palance justifies his murder of him. Similarly, Garrett pushes Holly to make the first move. It’s an act of ‘defensive murder’.) In a way, it makes perfect sense that Garrett ‘forced’ Holly to make the move(with the knife) so he could shoot him dead. Among Billy’s gang, Holly was the only one with the brains and individuality to see things the way they really are. In the opening scene when Garrett comes for a visit to Fort Sumner where Billy and his gang are staying, it is Holly who senses right away what the visit is really about. Holly is somewhere between alpha-dom and beta-dom. He’s not naturally alpha enough to challenge Billy and lead the gang, but he’s capable of thinking for himself and calling out bullshit when he smells it. When Garrett warns Billy and stands up to take his leave, we hear Holly laughing in a mocking manner ― at least in the Turner 1988 Version. And right after Garrett departs, Holly asks Billy, “why don’t you kill him?”, to which Billy responds, “... cuz he’s my friend.” Holly is like the one smart guy(or half-smart guy) among mostly dummies comprising Indio’s gang in Leone’s FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE. Throughout PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, the alpha-male/beta-male dynamic plays out in various shadings and nuances. And it’s not just about money but personality. When Garrett goes to meet the governor, he sees two rich businessmen at the table but isn’t impressed by them ― and even insults them. And Garrett doesn’t feel intimidated by the governor. But when Garrett visits Chisum, it’s obvious who is the bigger dog. Chisum is a formidable alpha-male rancher with authority, sharpness, and wit written all over him. He knows power and how to keep it. When he talks, Garrett listens. Chisum may be a son of a bitch, but he’s a great son of a bitch, a man of real strength than a weakling hiding behind money, clout, and influence. Thus, even though Chisum is antithetical to the ‘free spiritedness’ embodied by Billy, he is a man worthy of respect, a man to whom Peckinpah probably felt closer on some level than to Billy. Chisum has some of the attributes of Pike Bishop in THE WILD BUNCH. They’re natural leaders of men and ruthless with what they must do.
The alpha/beta dynamic is especially striking between Billy and deputy Bell(Matt Clark). Though Billy is the prisoner, Bell treats Billy like royalty. Billy has natural presence even in chains. It’s like a free dog senses superiority in a chained wolf. Bell has the gun and authority, but Billy is clearly the ‘bigger’ man. At one point, Bell even ‘cheats’ to lose a round of poker to Billy. It’s like Edith ‘cheating’ to lose on purpose to Archie in ALL IN THE FAMILY to please her man, whereupon Archie complains, “most people cheat to win, you cheat to lose.” Some people like to be serve, and some people like to be served. Bell’s nature is to serve, and Billy’s nature is to be served. Bell has a planet personality that revolves around higher authority while Billy has a sun personality that expects the world to revolve around him. Paradoxically, Bell’s servitude to the Law makes him servile to Billy as well. Whether the authority is legal or natural(as in the case with Billy), Bell wants to go along and be liked. There is an added element of the relational dynamic that changes according to one’s company. So, Bell may not be servile to just about anyone but to someone he deems or senses as superior. After all, Bell doesn’t seem to respect Ollinger all that much though they’re on the same team. So, even though there are servile personalities and dominant personalities, everyone shifts between the two modes depending on one’s present company. It’s like a white jock who acts big around white geeks may himself go into a servile geekish mode around tougher blacks. In the presence of Billy, Bell feels like a girl. Bell, though having taken on the badge, admires and looks up to Billy. When Billy is threatened by the religious nut Ollinger, Bell draws his gun and threatens Ollinger, ordering him to back down. Though Billy’s been sentenced to death and is about to be hanged, Bell wants to be thought of as Billy’s friend. It’s almost as if he cares more for Billy’s life than his own. Bell is a nice guy but doesn’t really understand the game of manhood. Indeed, when Billy finds a gun-hidden-for-him-in-the-outhouse(as one was for Michael in THE GODFATHER)and later pulls it out against Bell ― ordering Bell to drop his gun and surrender ― , Bell starts walking away thinking that Billy isn’t the kind of guy who would shoot him in the back. Bell, idealizing Billy to the very end, thinks too highly of him, when, in fact, Billy is a ruthless killer who will do anything to survive. So, what does Billy do? He shoots Bell in the back.
Yet, there’s a certain irony in the scene for just as Bell thought too much of Billy and got killed by Billy, Billy thinks too highly of Garrett and eventually gets killed by Garrett. In the opening scene, Billy says he won’t kill Garrett because Garrett is his friend. And indeed, it’s a troubled relationship. Though Garrett captured Billy and brought him to the prison house, it may have been Garrett who planted the gun in the outhouse so Billy could escape. Billy knows that Garrett has to kill him, but something in Billy blocks out that inevitability and continues to think of Garrett as a friend. (Maybe since most of the guys in his gang are such losers, Billy is flattered by the notion that a Real Man like Garrett could ever have been his friend. It’s not homo-love but a kind of man-affection between Real Guys. Such psychology existed among communists killed by Stalin. They were so sure that the bond of comradeship between Stalin and themselves was so strong that Stalin would never kill them. And Ernst Rohm, despite his differences with Hitler, didn’t think Hitler would actually betray him and kill him. Mishima wrote a play on this subject called MY FRIEND HITLER. And Pat Buchanan probably didn’t think his old friends in the GOP would so virulently turn on him in the 90s when he challenged the Neocon takeover of the party.) In some ways, that could be why Garrett is especially angry with himself at the end. If Billy had turned into a bitter enemy and put up a fight, Garrett could have seen it as a fair fight between sworn enemies. But when they finally confronted each another, Billy just stood there and even seemed to smile. Garrett didn’t kill Billy in a shootout but committed something close to ‘murder’ of someone who, to the very end, didn’t see Garrett as his enemy but as a friend. So, the dramatic tension of the film owes to something more than Billy’s refusal to give up his outlaw ways; it owes to his refusal to finalize his divorce with Garrett though Garrett has resolved to end the marriage for good. Come to think of it, it’s like what Bill Buckley did to Pat Buchanan(or Joseph Sobran) at The National Review in the early 90s.
So, even if the film fails as moral drama, it works as psycho-drama. Billy is a ruthless outlaw killer but remained a friend to Garrett. Garrett chose to side with the Law but betrayed his friend. There is something like this in RESERVOIR DOGS and PRINCE OF THE CITY. In RESERVOIR DOGS, an outlaw goes out of his way to defend an undercover policeman whom he trusts as a friend, but the undercover cop, in his service to the Law, must betray the very man who risks everything to save his life. In PRINCE OF THE CITY, a narcotics detective must give up his partners in order to be clear with the Law and his own conscience. Of course, things are murkier in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID because of the prevailing cynicism that the Law is corrupt, a tool of the rich and a crutch for the mediocre. The Law is for big-alphas who seek to institutionalize power and for meek-betas who want protection because they don’t have the guts to stand on their own two feet. Billy doesn’t believe in the Law because he figures on winning and losing on his own merits. According to Billy, the Law is really little more than organized outlawry where greedy men come to terms to divide up the shares in a kind of game theory. Thus, his outlawry is more honest. But one must still ask... if Billy and his gang make their living by stealing from guys like Chisum, who would they steal from if there were no Big Fish like Chisum? If there are no rich to steal from, whom does one steal from? In reality, criminals will then just feed on the poor. Just look at them wildass Negroes in Zimbabwe. They stole from rich whites, but when rich whites were gone, Negroes just stole from other Negroes even if it was just worn down shoes or ragged underwear.
Anyway, there is a kind of mutual awe between Billy and Garrett. On some level, each thinks of the other as the Bigger alpha. Garrett sees Billy as young and virile, at the peak of his life. Billy sees Garrett as a veteran, an elder, a man of experience and intelligence. And so, both are reluctant to kill the other guy since the other guy seems like the better guy. So, just as Bell thought too highly of Billy and trusted him too much, Billy makes the same mistake with Garrett. But Garrett, after killing Billy, feels like a louse since he killed a man who still considered him(Garrett) a friend ― even if Garrett no longer thought of Billy as a friend.
Alpha-male/beta-male dynamic comes into play when Garrett recruits help. Sheriff Baker(Slim Pickens)is reluctant to go after Black Harris(L.Q. Jones), a friend of Billy, but there’s something about Garrett that makes him feel compelled to go along. He tries to sweeten the deal by asking for a little bribe, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He just can’t make himself say ‘no’ to Garrett. (And if Garrett has his Mexican wife under his thumb, Baker is easily browbeaten by his own Mexican wife. Baker isn’t much of an alpha.) Another interesting thing about the scene is Garrett drags a fat third-rate petty thief to Sheriff Baker’s place. Again, it’s like some guys have natural power over the other guys, who just sheepishly do as they’re pushed. The fat thief doesn’t even dare to run. There’s a certain paralleling here. When Garrett first knocks him down with his horse, the fat thief didn’t know what hit him and got angry, but seeing that it’s Garrett, he becomes sheep and immediately becomes docile. Similarly, when Billy rudely woke up Luke(Harry Dean Stanton), Luke initially got riled up but upon seeing it’s Billy, he turns sheepish and crawls out of the bed to make room for Billy who also takes the woman in the bed. Billy’s world may be ‘free’, but it certainly isn’t equal ― and indeed this was true of the Counterculture as a whole, where Rock Stars towered over the faceless masses and got all the girls, money, and glory while most fat ugly guys at Woodstock got only fat ugly leftover girls.
There may be extra meaning to Garrett’s dragging the fat petty thief to Sheriff Baker’s place. In a way, the thief and sheriff look rather alike: both look like Mr. Wimpy in POPEYE cartoons. So, just as Garrett dragged the fat thief to Baker’s place against the man’s will, he drags Baker to a showdown with Black Harris against Baker’s will. And indeed, Baker ends up getting mortally wounded, and the scene ends with him sitting by the riverside with life ebbing out of him as his wife Mexican wife(Katy Jurado)sits close by. Still images from the scene have the richness and depth of religious paintings, featuring Peckinpah at his sublime best. And given that much of spirituality is about man’s contemplation of death, Baker’s final moment allows for some ‘religious’ sentiment. (The scene is especially moving in contrast to the previous scene where Baker’s wife showed no sign of respect for her corrupt and spineless sheriff of a husband. She not only resented Garrett’s recruitment of her husband but that he took the job for a piece of gold. She forced him to give back the gold, and so Baker dies as a heroic redeemed sheriff than as a money-grubbing opportunist. She even maintains a distance between herself and her husband, as if the tragic but precious moment is something he rightfully earned for himself; it’s his real piece of gold, and in earning it, he regained her respect too, but she must lose him forever. In a way, Garrett was glad to bribe Baker with the gold coin since the deal put them in the same footing as opportunists who can be bought, i.e. Baker’s ‘greed’ affirms his own. So, when Baker tosses back the gold coin to Garrett, Garrett knows that he’s all alone as the Judas character who’s killing just for money. Baker, in the end, did it out of a sense of duty. There’s a funny irony about Baker’s final act of courage for it was done out of fear of his wife.) Peckinpah came up with some of the most memorable death scenes in cinema. Consider the final moment of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY when Joel McCrea’s character casts his gaze on the high country one last time before he ‘enters his house justified’. It’s also there in THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE when Jason Robard as Hogue looks back on his life on the verge of death, a scene that goes unnoticeably from comic to tragic. There are three kinds of deaths: one where a person dies slowly through ‘natural causes’, one where a person is killed almost instantly, and one where a person is mortally wounded but has time to ‘savor’ the meaning of his death. In THE WILD BUNCH, most people get killed instantly, but some characters suffer dragged-out agonizing deaths as with the guy who’s shot in face in the opening scene and with Angel who is tortured before he’s killed. (It could also be argued that THE WILD BUNCH ends with ‘timed’ death in that the Bunch withstand gunshots to their bodies but keeping fighting until their last breath.) Instant death doesn’t come to Cody(Elisha Cook Jr.)when the cabin he’s shacking up in with Billy and another guy comes under attack by Garrett and his men. Shot in the stomach, he feels his life draining away. But what he’d once said in empty bluster, “I’m not afraid of Pat Garrett” can be repeated with sincere confidence as he musters enough courage to die a man’s death. Death can be a great redeemer for even the lowest of men, perhaps the lowest most of all. In the moment of a ‘good death’, he can wash away all the sins and compromises of his entire life. Black Harris and Alamosa Bill don’t die immediately either. The wounded Harris lays out his case to Garrett before being hit with the fatal bullet. And Alamosa Bill has just enough breath left in him to ponder his immortality(in folklore) after being felled by Billy. And a Mexican sheepherder gives a longish speech to Billy as he dies of wounds from Chisum’s goons. Baker is to die but has time to die. That ‘time’ element in killing is both ugly and beautiful. Ugly because the pain is prolonged but also beautiful because that short twilight duration between life and death has a timeless quality. Consider the death of Cheyenne in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. The gunshot wound to the belly in unbearably painful but also moving because it’s not just death but ‘something to do with death’. If someone is shot and dies instantly, it’s a killing, but if someone is shot and dies slowly, it’s a dying. Chaney(Bronson) also makes sure that Frank(Henry Fonda) dies a death than is merely killed a death; he wants Frank to remember in his final moments what he’d done to Chaney and his older brother long ago. Sean(James Coburn) in DUCK YOU SUCKER isn’t just killed either. Though mortally wounded, he remains alive and chooses his own ‘meaningful’ death by blowing himself up. He too is blessed ― or cursed ― with the ‘time’ of death.
Baker’s death scene is good evidence of Peckinpah’s natural rapport with older actors ― men of his generation or older ― , whereas Peckinpah’s scenes with younger people seem somewhat stilted and strained. Peckinpah was ‘born old’. On the set, many observers noted that Peckinpah worked in an absolute alpha male mode of hierarchy. He had great respect for big name stars & top professionals and treated them like royalty; and even if he fell into argument with them, it was disagreement among equals. But Peckinpah treated second-tier actors and lesser members of the technical crew like dirt. He might have even broken the record with MAJOR DUNDEE and THE WILD BUNCH in the number of people he fired. And some of this comes through PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID’s alpha-male/beta-male ‘philosophy’, which, far from being critiqued or derided, is posited almost as the essential lawbook of manhood. After all, the problem of Pat Garrett, as far I can make out, isn’t that he’s abusive and lording over others; after all, Billy does much the same, even his friends. It’s that Pat Garrett, losing his alpha male confidence as he ages, seeks to maintain his dominance with the arm of the Law wrapped around him. Near the end, Garrett recruits another guy to help him go after Billy, and again Garrett the alpha prevails over a hapless beta fella, Rupert(Walter Kelley), because Garrett is simply the ‘bigger’ man. There is also an element of ‘age war’ in terms of whom Garrett and Billy kill. Though Billy kills young as well as old men, the two most memorable people he kills are older men: the religious nut Ollinger and Alamosa Bill Kermit(Jack Elam). And just about all of Garrett’s victims are younger men, with the possible exception of Black Harris, an older member of the gang.
The one time Garrett almost gets into a shootout with an older man is purely an accident in what many consider to be the best scene of the film. As with the death of sheriff Baker, it takes place along a river. We see a raft carrying a old man and his family while Garrett relaxes along the river bank, leaning against a tree. Children toss bottles into the river and the old man takes aim and shoots at them, and Garrett joins in the ‘fun’ by taking a shot at the bottle himself, but the old man mistakes the gunfire as aimed at him and shoots in Garrett’s direction, whereupon Garrett picks up a rifle and takes aim at the old man, but they both put down their guns and prevent bloodshed. The scene says several things: (1) Despite the simple myth of ‘progress’ having destroyed the Old West, the Old West was despoiling itself. The old man on the raft is not a man of power, wealth, and influence, but his attitude toward the world around him amounts to ‘shoot at stuff’. His kids toss empty bottles into rivers, and he shoots them. His family litters the landscape. Even without the forces of ‘progress’ and ‘greed’, the Old West would have been despoiled anyway ― just like so much of the Third World has been despoiled without by natives without ‘progress’. (2) In a world of few laws and lots of guns, even something trivial can trigger off tragedy. One false move and real people die. Mere instinct can decide life or death at any moment. If the man on the raft and Garrett hadn’t lowered their guns at the same time, one of them might have died. The scene is also reminiscent of the opening scene where Billy and his gang are shooting at chickens. Garrett appears from behind and joins in the fun, but Billy and his men initially take fright, thinking maybe someone’s shooting at them. While his men cower, Billy’s quick instincts realizes it’s only Garrett joining in the fun. But then, Billy’s instinct fails him at the end when Garrett did come to kill him. Because guns are plentiful for miles around, having the right instinct, the ability to read situations, is essential to survival. You have to know which side to take, when to take a stand, when to back down, when to play alpha, when to play beta, etc. (3). There might be a hidden thematic link between the death of sheriff Baker and the old man on the raft. When Garrett went to see Baker, the latter was building a boat and said he planned to drift away to another town. Garrett indirectly caused Baker’s death, and perhaps the old-man-on-the-raft is a kind of ghostly reminder of Baker, a buried guilt conscience that hangs over Garrett. After all, he didn’t mean for Baker to get killed, but Baker got killed anyway. Similarly, he didn’t mean no harm when he shot at the bottle, but it almost led to Garrett killing the man on the raft. (4). The river-raft scene also says something about the randomness and suddenness of violence. PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is surely one of the most violent Westerns, but it doesn’t feel very violent because of the way the violent is presented. People ‘accidentally’ stumble into or come upon violence without much in the way of set-up or suspense. This is perfectly conveyed in the river-raft scene, which begins with the quiet old man on the raft shooting at empty bottles tossed into the river; meanwhile, Garrett seems to be taking it easy along the riverbank; but then, their misunderstanding nearly flares into violence. Most of the violence in the movie unfolds this way, and as such, is different from the violence in most Peckinpah films where it’s built up for maximum impact. Take the opening scene of THE WILD BUNCH when ― with the gang riding into town to the bank, bounty hunters preparing for an ambush from the rooftop, the Temperance Union unwittingly marching into soon-to-be war zone, etc. ― the suspense mounts and mounts, and we know they’re soon gonna be ‘blowing this town all to hell’(as Crazy Lee says). Or consider the setup of the hotel shootout in THE GETAWAY. We wait with abated breath for a bloodletting like no other. But there are almost no such setups in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. A scene will begin with ‘ordinary’ things happening and then ‘accidentally’ lurch into violence. Violence comes out of and fades into the blue. Instead of having dramatic scenes vs action scenes, dramatic scenes bleed into action scenes. This aspect of the movie may have been discomfiting to many viewers more used to the classic Western setup where a series of dramatic problems lead to the explosive scenes of violence. Indeed, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID ends without the classic final shoot-out. When Garrett kills Billy, it’s not Garrett vs Billy or Garret’s gang vs Billy’s gang. It’s just Garrett-sees-Billy-standing-there-and-shoots-him-and-that’s-that. At one point, there seemed to be something like a setup for a great showdown when Billy, on his way to Mexico, found his Mexican friend killed by Chisum’s men and resolved to ride back to his gang to take revenge on Chisum ― with maybe Garrett caught somewhere in between. But Billy’s rage seems to dissipate soon enough, and his priority becomes making love to Rita Coolidge and freeloading off an old man. And when Garrett and his two men finally arrive at the town where Billy and his gang are staying, Billy is too busy in bed while his men are all either asleep or hanging low like the droopy deputy on RICOCHET RABBIT. Garrett finally shoots a laid-back Billy, and that’s about it. There is no grand finale, not even a classic shootout. In PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, violence happens like ‘shit happens’. In most cases, the characters don’t go looking for violence but bump into it somehow. Though Garrett goes after Billy, it’s almost as if he’s trying to get away from Billy in the name of going after him; he’s trying to turn the job into a vacation that negates the job. Garrett purposely prolongs the hunt to delay the inevitable. He knows he has a job to do, and made up his mind, but he subverts and stalls the mission as much as he can. Closer he gets to Billy, more he drags his heels. It’s like the situation with the bear in Ingmar Bergman’s EVENING OF THE JESTERS(aka SAWDUST AND TINSEL), where the sick animal has to be killed, but its caretaker, a woman, simply can’t make herself do it. Violence creaks in and out of scenes in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. When Garrett sits in Lemuel’s(Chill Wills) saloon, he doesn’t expect Holly, Beaver, and Alias to walk in. Their paths just happen to cross. Similarly, Billy drops into a family(running a trading goods store) having supper ― Billy seems to disregard not only fences and borders but doors and walls as he comes and goes, in and out of homes of a bunch of people without permission, as if he’s has a natural permit to live eat and sleep anywhere he chooses ― and joins in, only to find Alamosa Bill Kermit at the same table. Initially, all at the table ― Billy, the man and woman of house and their kids, and Kermit ― act like everything’s normal, but the chance encounter between Billy and Kermit(hired as deputy by Garrett)means one of them will have to die. Even though Kermit has been tracking Billy, they meet by accident, and their gunfight is something of a ‘mistake’, with both guys cheating: they are supposed to walk ten paces, turn around and shoot, but Billy turns around on the first count and waits for Kermit to cheat, which he does by turning around at the count of ‘seven’. Though Kermit’s death isn’t as prolonged as Baker’s, he also doesn’t die instantly. Like Black Harris ― killed by Garrett ― , Kermit has ‘time’ to think of his death. He tells Billy that at least he’ll be remembered. In the Old West, if you’re a nobody, the only way to be a somebody is either to kill or be killed by a famous gunman. Kermit feared facing off against Billy, but as death becomes him, he hopes he might have gained for himself a small piece of immortality: he’ll be remembered as on of the men killed by the famous Billy the Kid; it is a kind of dark honor. Just before the duel between Billy and Kermit, the man of the house related to Billy the manner in which his oldest son died. They storytelling is of a family tragedy but also a means by the which the son will be remembered. And in an earlier scene where Billy and his men size up three strangers with hostile intentions, Billy tells a story of how some guy got into an argument over a pair of boots and got killed. The living remember the past through stories of death and by killing or getting killed themselves also become part of the never-ending story of violence. Folklore is the burial ground and paradise for outlaws, drifters, gamblers, and gunmen; even in death, they live on as legends. (The scene where Billy visits the family having supper with Alamosa Bill Kermit says something about the nature of allegiances in the Old West. Bill drops in almost like a blood relative and probably thought the family was on his side. But having supper with the family is a man sworn to hunt down and kill Billy. Though Billy minds his manners, there’s tension in the room arising from a sense of betrayal. It’s not that the family was specifically giving aid to Kermit to kill Billy but the general sense that everyone has his own life and interests and thus no special allegiances outside the family. So, the family, when dining with Kermit, might share information as to the whereabouts of Billy. But if the family had been dining with Billy, Billy might have been provided with useful information. The scene somewhat echoes Pat Garrett’s visit to Chisum. Chisum says to Garrett, “Glad to be of service, Garrett, but don’t overuse it.” They may have some common interests but they are not family. Chisum is more blunt with Garrett than the family could ever be with Billy, but the feelings are similar. Billy realizes he may be over-using the ‘service’,
the hospitality shown him by the family. Also, despite his charm, he essentially barges into and violates another folks’ private space; he knocks AFTER he opens the door; the family may have been too kindly or too afraid to tell Billy that it doesn’t like to be intruded upon this way, and finally Billy realizes something he hadn’t noticed before when he sees Kermit at the table. A narcissist is not only in love with himself but assumes the whole world is in love with him and likely to mistake a smile or handshake as genuine goodwill when it could be mere diplomacy out of manners, fear, or self-interest. Billy may also realize that the life he chose put him in such a situation. He wants to be free and unattached to anyone, so why should anyone feel any particular attachment or allegiance to him? In this light, maybe the love scene at the end has a special meaning. Though it seems to show Billy practicing ‘free love’, maybe Billy was moving away from ‘free love’ and striving toward loyal love where he would have a wife and children who would be attached to him in a real way. So, maybe the Billy that Garrett kills in the end is not so much the wild Billy but a milder Billy who’s thinking of settling down, which adds another layer of irony to the film. Anyway, the family whom Billy visits could be said to be neutral, but it could also be argued that neutral people betray all sides. Paradoxically, by being fair and helpful to all sides, they unwittingly stab all sides in the back. It’s especially meaningful that the family is in the trading business since the business is about selling to all sides. It’s about selling guns and butter to both lawmen and outlaws. Also, people are hungry for news and gossip, and the family is happy to get fresh information from whichever side. In a way, the family is like village farmers during the Vietnam War. When the village was occupied by Viet Cong and North Vietnam soldiers, the villagers went along with the men with guns; but when the village was later occupied by Americans and South Vietnam regulars, the villagers switched sides. While some villagers had genuine loyalties one way or the other, many more didn’t care which side won as long as they would be left alone. The dilemma that Billy walks into is also akin to the problem of politics. Politicians may expect certain groups to be on their side, but the voters often switch sides and go with someone else. Early in the Democratic Primaries in 2008, many experts said blacks were generally behind Hillary who took their support for granted. But when blacks began to think Obama could win, most of them dumped Hillary overnight. But the sense of betrayal goes the other way too. Voters think a certain politician is on their side, but the politician could betray the very people who put him into office. Both Nixon and Clinton were famous for this, which is why many conservatives came to hate Nixon and many liberals came to despise Clinton. The supper scene with the family is one of the calmest in the movie but possibly the most tension-filled. Everyone feels embarrassed but does his or her best to pretend all’s well. Billy feels embarrassed that he ever thought the family was on his side when he finds Bill Kermit as the family’s guest. The family feels embarrassed of being ‘found out’ by Billy. And Bill Kermit, who was probably telling the family how he’s gonna track down and kill Billy, is suddenly faced with a situation where he has to face the music and without backup. The theme of Betrayal of Neutrality runs throughout the film. The people of Lincoln, who elected Pat Garrett as sheriff and were eager to see Billy hang, do nothing to stop Billy’s escape ― and some citizens even help him. The prostitute Ruthie Lee, who’s fond of Billy, spill the beans on him when Garrett buys her for the evening. And even Billy’s own crew do nothing to take vengeance on Garrett after their leader is dead. Most people are sheep and just go with the ‘winners’ who could be anyone depending on the situation. In a way, politicians are just like most people since they too bend to the will of the powers-that-be. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all mainly sucked up to Jews since Jews have the most power. But if Jews were powerless, politicians would be gigolos to some other power. But given the way of human nature and psychology, most people don’t wanna believe that they are cowardly sheep, and so the powers-that-be offer them convenient moral excuses to justify their sheepery. For example, though most people go along with the Jew/gay agenda out of fear and intimidation, they embrace the convenient excuse that they are acting in support of ‘tolerance’, ‘diversity’, and ‘equality’. Jews and gays are too smart to just force people to agree with them; they know people will feel resentment. But Jews and gays also know that appealing to goodwill alone won’t work either. Instead, they exert the force but also offer the ready-made-moral-excuse-pill that the people can swallow. Jewish sticks-and-carrots and Gay dicks-and-faggots. Thus, every politician or voter who sucks up to Zionism or gay power can make himself or herself believe that he or she changed his or her mind out of some ‘progressive’ goodwill. In this, Jewish power and gay power are drawing lessons from Christianity that had long perfected the art of gaining power through smile and guile, through love and shove.)
Paradoxically, the killed live on through stories told by the living while those who go on living fade into obscurity. Of course, most people who are killed are forgotten. Who cares about any of the millions of Ukrainian peasants killed by Jewish communists of the Soviet Union? But being killed can serve as fertile material for storytelling, whether it be professional, amateur, or word-to-mouth. The biggest such story is, of course, that of Jesus Christ, whose death was no less crucial to His legend and myth than His life was. Similarly, the story of Billy the Kid became legendary because he was thought to have been murdered tragically by a man who was his friend. Though most historians now agree that the real-life Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett were not friends, the element of Billy-betrayed-by-the-Judas-like-Garrett made the story more compelling and even added a layer of martyrdom to Billy’s final moment. Personally, though I never accepted PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID as accurate history ― what Hollywood movie is? ― , I thought the basic narrative about Garrett and Billy having been friends was based on actual history, but that turns out to be false. So, what does that tell you about veracity of storytelling? And the lies and simplifications continue, bigger and ‘better’ than ever, even when dealing with up-to-the-moment events. For example, SOCIAL NETWORK would have us believe Zuckerberg cheated the Winklevosses because he was socially insulted by the latter when, in fact, no such thing ever happened. But for hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of people all over the world, the impression is that Winklevosses, as ‘Aryan’ Nazi twins, acted arrogantly and thereby justified Zuckerberg’s reneging on the contract. Given that most people get their view of reality from movies and documentaries ― hardly more accurate than fiction ― , the top storytellers have immense control over the populace. They can turn black into white, white into black, gay into straight, straight into gay, Jew into mainstream, mainstream into Jew. Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian are among the biggest Zionist liar-distortionists of the modern era. It turns out SCHINDLER’S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN have very little to do with what really happened, and SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER is one of the most bogus movies ever made. And their lies are different from the ‘lies’ of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, which doesn’t pretend to be a true or accurate depiction of what really happened long ago in a mythic period. Peckinpah’s film is a re-imagining of the Old West, ‘archaeologically’ authentic in its nostalgia for a bygone era and artistically fertile in refurbishing of old legends. Whatever its moral and dramatic failings, it cannot be faulted for its lack of biographical accuracy, which was never the purpose.
Peckinpah, a ‘stickler for details’, savored the realistic look of things in movies, but his main interest wasn’t unearthing facts of historical events but observing the dialectic between reality and mythology(especially given the nature of the artform that is, at once, the most real and the most unreal, the most direct/honest and the most manipulative/deceptive), so brilliantly conveyed in the opening scene of THE WILD BUNCH where the live-action color sequences freeze intermittently into stark b/w images ― of old newspapers ― , indicating the connect and disconnect between facts and legend. (But there was a keener irony for Peckinpah wasn’t simply saying ‘this’ is true and ‘that’ is false. Indeed, it was more a matter of trialectics or even quadralectics than mere dialectics. First, there was the actual event. Second, there was the news of that event. Ideally, newspapers were supposed to tell the truth, but they rarely did so back in the Old West ― and they still don’t today, what with Negro thugs being called ‘teens’ and ‘youths’. Or consider how the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case was turned into a case of evil white guy shooting a helpless black kid ‘armed with only Skittles’. So, there is the dialectic between the real event and the fuzzy reporting of the event. Third, there is the romanticization of the reporting of the event through popular culture in song, novels, and movies. This added another round of dialectic. The Western genre grew out of this and presented a mythic West that often had little to do with the real one. Then, people like Peckinpah came along and opened another dialectical phase with a greater commitment to the truth. But Peckinpah was less interested in the actual truth of history as in the Truth of historical perception. THE WILD BUNCH isn’t about what-really-may-have-happened as about what’s-really-at-stake-in-all-the-layers-of-truths-and-untruths. Peckinpah didn’t wipe the creative slate clean of all the myths but scraped off layers of myths here and there to reveal parts of the buried truth at the bottom. Thus, the final product was neither truth nor myth but the interplay of various layers of truths and myths. Peckinpah probably felt this was the only truly truthful way to make a Western since we will never know all the actual truths of the Old West unless we invent a time machine. What’s past is past, and whatever might have really happened, we can only know of it from bits and pieces of documents, hearsay, rumors, folklore, contradicting statements and recollections. History is not a science but a form of retro-speculation, and art is not about facts but the deeper truth of the limitations of human knowledge.) The result was a violent cross-breeding of realism and fantasy, a Western that seemed, at once, more grittily real and more wildly exaggerated than previous Westerns. In PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Garrett says to Poe(John Beck), “What you want and what you get are two different things”, and it sums up the meaning of Peckinpah’s films. In THE WILD BUNCH, a minor character says, “It’s not what you meant to do but what you did that I don’t like.” Most Westerns give people what they want; that’s what genre works are supposed to do, favoring fantasy over the truth. An artist ― or at least a higher form of dramatic artist ― is supposed to favor truth over fantasy. Peckinpah worked within the Western genre, but he also saw himself as an artist. He loved the Western myths and worked within the tradition, especially in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, but he also grew up in the West listening to the tales of old-timers who had actually seen the real thing. So, there was the West of Hollywood movies and the West that Peckinpah saw and heard through his own eyes and ears. Yet, he also knew that the old-timers couldn’t be trusted since storytelling has a life of its own ― tales, passing from one person to another, become distorted, exaggerated, embellished, and/or condensed. In that sense, the ‘real West’ was difficult to ascertain since so much of what became the ‘real story’ of the West was based on legends created by storytelling ― and if MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE is any indication, even book writers and newspapermen back then often favored the legend over fact for any number of agendas, biases, and/or interests. So, what is the Real West? And even if such could be discovered and accessed through careful reconsideration of records and archaeological research, is it ‘truer’ than the West that came to be known to us through storytelling, hearsay, and legends? What if the lies are as much a part of the heart of the West as the truths? Suppose a man became famous through his lies and masks. Can we say there is a real him behind the lies and masks? What if his lies and masks became an essential element of what he is. Can we really understand Peter Sellers without the roles he played in movies and in life? Can we understand Diane Selwyn without the psychological ‘reality’ of her alter ego, Betty(in MULHOLLAND DR.)? Can we understand Norman Bates without his split personality in PSYCHO? This poses a problem for an artist like Peckinpah, who wanted to unearth and access the real West yet was intoxicated with the power and beauty of Western myths. And this haunted his personal life as well. What was he? A Hollywood professional or a romantic legend? Once Peckinpah became self-conscious of his legendary and iconic status as a ‘maverick’ filmmaker, the wild cowboy of Hollywood, he began to believe in his own myths, culminating in the ridiculous and embarrassing ― but not uninteresting ― BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. Peckinpah has been appreciated and admired as a man who grappled and struggled with his dual role as artist and entertainer, a digger of truth and peddler of myths. And Peckinpah understood that Truth isn’t necessarily factual. Even if PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID offers little in the way of historical facts, there is psychological truth in what happens between Garrett and Billy.
I think maybe one of the moral failings of the film owed to Peckinpah’s over-personalization of the narrative: by identifying too closely with the compromised ‘whore’ Garrett, a self-loathing Peckinpah might have seen Billy as a symbol of ‘pure devotion to art’ that too often eluded his grasp in Hollywood. Since Peckinpah felt torn by the call of art and the commands of commerce, he might have over-idealized Billy in his mind as a stand-in for certain ideals whereas the Billy that WE see seems like a rather grubby and not-too-pleasant character. We see Billy as a charming punk whereas Peckinpah might have seen him as saint, albeit a dark one. And this may be the central flaw of the film. By over-personalizing the narrative, Peckinpah failed to develop Billy on his own terms. Instead, Billy is an embodiment of certain illusory virtues, visible only to Peckinpah and not obvious to us. Suppose there’s an ugly guy, but some woman finds him attractive because certain features of his remind her of her dead beloved husband. Thus, the woman might look past his ugliness and fixate only on the features that appeal to her for personal reasons. Similarly, whatever personal meaning Billy might have had to Peckinpah, it doesn’t work for us because our perspectives are different. And given the reality of crazy Negro crime all over America, what sane person would prefer the outlaw over the lawman ― though, to be sure, too many Americans are not sane. (On the other hand, given the rise of political correctness and the gutless obedience of most military and police personnel in carrying out orders handed to them by their liberal Jewish/gay/Negro masters, it’s getting more difficult appreciate the police and the military as bastions of American patriotism and Law. When Negro youths run around and beat white people, but the police department doesn’t say it like it is ― that Negro thugs are attacking innocent whites ― , what kind of protection can you expect from the Law? When the military is being turned into a leading institution in the gay agenda and interracism ― and functions essentially as an arm of international Zionism ― , what value does it have for most decent white Americans? Of course, we must be careful not to fall for the fallacy ― evident in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID ― that just because the Law is corrupt or compromised, the outlaws must be good simply because they violate the Law. No, just because the Law is bad doesn’t mean that those who break all laws are good. But such views were fashionable in the 60s and early 70s. In France there was even a radical leftist organization that called for looting of stores. Its members acted like black flashmobs today but with an intellectual/ideological underpinning that argued that since capitalism is exploitative robbery, anti-capitalist robbery of capitalism is a form of justice. The reason why black flashmobs and looters are more dangerous is due to the biological nature of their thuggery. White people with bad ideas can act badly, but if those ideas are removed, they can act good again. But black badness is genetically rooted in the very nature of blacks. Blacks don’t act bad because they come under some foul ideology like communism or radicalism but because the biological core of their being was shaped by 100,000s of yrs of evolution in the Dark Continent of savage sub-Saharan Africa. A corollary to this was the notion that since modern society is mad and unfree, the crazy individual is the truly sane and free person, an idea at the center of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. Though such crazy notions seemed to have faded by the late 70s and especially in the 1980s, a variation resurfaced in the late 80s with the rise of Rap culture and Gay power. Rap thugs were lionized as wise prophets who be telling the Troof, and gays were elevated to mainstream status, indeed almost as if gays were more ‘normal’ than truly normal people. This radical inversion of values wasn’t resisted by the masses because they were under the spell of the media and Hollywood controlled by Jews. Indeed, the elevation of Jews as the noblest people and culture of the West may be the greatest inversion of them all. Just as white women feel a need to submit themselves to black men who are likely to abuse, exploit, and abandon them, white conservatives feel this crazy need to submit to Jews despite the fact that most American Jews only despise and love to piss on American conservatives. Just as white women are addicted to Negro muscle and pud, white American conservatives have been sold on the notion of the spiritual and historical holiness of Jews. Both white women and white conservatives are blind to the truth and reality because they are addicted to sensations and/or fantasies. Just like people go to casinos with the almost certain prospect of losing money for the sheer thrill of the game, white women go off with Negroes for the thrill of jungle-fevered massive orgasms. It’s not rational, but why should this surprise conservatives and rightists who, contrary to liberals and leftists, have always insisted that human nature is dark and irrational? So, it doesn’t matter if black males make poor long-term prospects. People, especially the less intelligent, go for short-term thrills. Indeed, the obesity of many white who ‘go black’ speaks volumes about them. Though they consciously know that eating too much junk will make them fat, they cannot resist the urge to splurge on surgary/fatty stuff. Also, American conservatism, due to its essentially Christian emphasis, is defenseless against race mixing since Christianity is supposed to be about universalism and preaches the equality of souls of all people. The spiritual universality of Christianity offers no defense against biological sensuality of jungle-fever-ism. Also, American conservatism tends to be bland, and so when American conservative girls come of age, they want some excitement, and that excitement comes in the form of interracist rap music, movies, and TV shows. And there is high school sports where white girls wanna be cheerleaders but many of the top athletes happen to be black. American conservatism also happens to be lacking in brains and intellect, and so conservatives are so grateful and dazzled when Zionist neocons join the GOP and do the arguing for the conservative side.)
Peckinpah’s moral outlook in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is fundamentally flawed ― even maddening ― , but the film still isn’t as offensive as some of the utter bullshit movies made by Jewish directors. I personally find movies like SOCIAL NETWORK and MUNICH far more offensive. Most offensive is when a film purports to courageously tell the truth but spins a bigger lie. Given all the recent myths about mega-internet star Mark Zuckerberg, SOCIAL NETWORK was sold as a hard-nosed look at the real Zuckerberg, warts and all. But the ‘warts’ in the film are essentially apologies, excuses, or rationales for Jewish vileness, i.e. Jews act like dirty weasels because white goyim are closet-antisemitic Nazis(as the Winklevosses are presented). Thus, what seems like a tough expose of Zuckerberg is really just a Jewish Supremacist rationalization of all the dirty Jewish tricks employed to reach the top. Sorkin and Zaillian are utterly despicable as straight-faced liars. The smooth professionalism with which they tell their lies is almost pathological; they should really work in political propaganda, but then their works are actually propaganda posing as journalistic art. They are cunning Jewish weasels who wrap lies in the vibes of ‘truth’, which is why so many people, critics included, are fooled. They mastered the ‘art’ of making the untrue look and feel true. As seeing-and-feeling is believing in cinema, their operative mode is manipulation-toward-belief than provocation-to-think. Their works are so slick, smooth, and seamlessly constructed that we are made to believe they must be true since how can something that looks and feels so comfortingly real be false? They lull you into the Jewish Supremcist trap. Take the awful SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER, a Malcolm-Gladwellian fantasy that fooled a lot of people. It seems like an unusually intelligent film that came out of Hollywood. The characters seem more real, more multi-dimensional, and more ‘complex’. So, one might think it’s a film about truth unlike most movies dishing out fantasy. But, what can be said of Lillian Hellman can be said of Zaillian. Just about everything in the film is a lie, factually, socially, and psychologically. There was no Magic Negro in real life. That was added to perpetuate the myth of the alliance between white liberals and streetwise blacks. And contrary to white liberals raising their kids to be nice, friendly, and accommodating, they instill their kids with ruthlessness to climb to the top and keep the power(that’s mostly monopolized by Jews). Anyone who thinks Sorkin and Zaillian are raising their kids to be ‘nice’ and ‘like everyone else’ is a damn fool. They want non-Jews to think and feel that way while they themselves root for Jews to win and take all. I respect real artists, and I can respect honest entertainers, but I feel nothing but disgust for the likes of Sorkin and Zaillian who’ve mastered the dubious ‘art’ of faux art by making fakery seem compelling and complex. So, even though FEW GOOD MEN is totally bogus, it fooled a lot of people with its big speeches, tense drama, and ‘important’ topics. And MONEYBALL, another Jewish Supremacist movie, fooled a lot of people with its ‘intelligence’ and streaming of voluminous ‘facts’, when the final product, as crafted by Sorkin and Zaillian, tells us that a wise and brilliant Jewish wunderkind ― a man-boy who looks like Elena Kagan ― saved the day. While it’s true that Jews are smarter and many Jews are at the forefront of American business, science, and etc, what is utter bullshit is this notion of Jewish genius as oh-so-wonderful, as if the Jewish community hasn’t produced its share of fraudsters like Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs gang, controllers of porn industry, and countless crooked Jewish lawyers ― not to mention Sorkin and Zaillian themselves. But the character ‘Peter Brand’ in MONEYBALL, as the embodiment of wonderful Jewish intelligence, is presented as angelic figure like one of those cherubic putti ― chubby babies with angel wings ― in Western paintings. If SOCIAL NETWORK told us that the vile Jew Zuckerberg was only being nasty as a defensive mechanism against an elite world dominated by Anglo-Nazis(!), MONEYBALL would have us believe that a some freakonomical fat angelic Jew is so much on the side of truth that he selflessly plays second fiddle to help some handsome but not-very-bright goy to rack up a winning season. One movie says Jewish nastiness is morally justified, and the other movie says Jewish genius is selfless and kind. Puke! If you thought Magic Negro was sickening enough, just a get a load of that tub of lard as Saint Jew.
This isn’t to fault Sorkin and Zaillian for not sticking to every fact, especially given that the facts of any case or event are not always clear. Almost no film based on real people/events tries to be factual on every account ― THE PRINCE OF THE CITY came close, but then it failed at the box office ― , but movies can be fundamentally honest in terms of intention and insight. Sorkin is a Jewish Supremacist who fictionalizes certain characters/events not to access the deeper truth via imaginative speculation/dramatization but to push a tribal agenda. He’s really a Jewish televangelist working for his kind. Sorkin is a hideous dishonest Jew and would have us believe that he’s a conveyer of complex truth ignored or missed by most movies when he’s just another cynical Hollywood script doctor and hack(albeit one with talent)spinning and serving up simpleminded lies. The difference is Sorkin doesn’t have the courage or integrity to admit what he is and what he’s doing. He works on the level of Neil Simon but pretends to be David Mamet. Neil Simon was never an artist nor a truth-teller; he was like the Jewish Norman Rockwell of the stage, giving people what they wanted to make them feel comfortable, and to that degree, he was an honest entertainer. Sorkin, in contrast, pretends to have the artistic courage to confront ― and make us confront ― the hidden and complex truths that the ‘apathetic’ public isn’t willing to face, but what he really gives us is same old tired politically correct fairytales which wouldn’t upset or shock anyone weaned on Hollywood movies and public education. Sorkin doesn’t work against Hollywood junk and political correctness; he glosses them over with affectations of ‘truth-telling’ and sham-complexity that pass for ‘intelligence’, and a lot of people are fooled. Similarly, one could be fooled by SCHINDLER’S LIST because of its grim violence. One might think, “how could a movie that is so powerful be untrue?” The movie may be accurate about some of the atrocities carried out by the Nazis, but the whole Schindler-and-Jews thing is mostly a fairytale with almost no basis in reality, no less than in SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER. And invoking artistic license will not work since guys like Zaillian pretend to be artists and tellers of truth. When Hollywood made a whole bunch of bogus ‘based on reality’ movies in the past, we knew they were mostly hackworks conforming to Hollywood conventions of the time. Back then, ‘artist’ was a dirty word in Hollywood whose policy was to give the masses what the wanted. But SCHINDLER’S LIST pretends to go against the grain and show the ‘true’ horrors of the Holocaust. It claims to have the courage to unflinchingly and unblinkingly recreate and represent the tragic historical event. Then, why the bullshit fairytale about Schindler and the Jews, each of them is presented as the most lovable and wonderful person on Earth(when we know Jews are among the most unpleasant people ― Howard Stern, Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, Lloyd Blankfein, Sarah Silverman, Ron Jeremy, and Jerry Springer would be the same disgusting Jews inside or outside a Nazi labor camp)? In the past, Hollywood gave us movies that would never be mistaken as art or even intended to be mistaken as such. Today, Hollywood gives us movies like MISSISSIPPI BURNING, MONEYBALL, SCHINDLER’S LIST, and SOCIAL NETWORK that have the feeling of art ― I mean how could they be untrue when the violence, brutality, and/or details seem so real? ― but are really the same old Hollywood fairytales wrapped in the affectations of art. People see blood spurting, hear a lot of F-words, characters getting intensely emotional, and lots of compelling situations, and so they mistake ‘based on a true story’ as the real true story. As with Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, the audience is beaten with the ‘truth’ with such fury that they dare not question it. That may have been why Hollywood was especially angry with Gibson; the problem wasn’t so much that Gibson showed Jews as having taken part in the death of Jesus but that he did in a style and manner that Hollywood Jews had come to claim as their own special moral weapon for THEIR holy narratives. In the days of Old Hollywood, due to the demands of censorship, most people readily understood that no Hollywood movie ― even ones ‘based on true stories’ ― could reflect reality as it was or is. Sexuality was censored, foul words were banned, violence was cleaned up ― no one could mistake even the most ‘realistic’ old Hollywood war movies as what real war looks, sounds, and feels like ― , and so people were likely to see movies as movies than as true presentations of reality. But with the much greater expressive freedom of today’s movies, Hollywood can present a reality that looks, sounds, and feels grimly and powerfully real. Spielberg’s use of violence in SCHINDLER’S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is powerful and absolutely compelling. But we are so impressed and affected by the raw physicality of the ‘reality’ depicted that we come to swallow whole hog everything in the movie. It’s like if you’re scared out of your wits, you wish for a security blanket and grab at just about anything offered to you. So, Spielberg scares the hell out of you in the opening scenes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, and so you grab for anything offering comfort, and that thing happens to be Zaillian’s quasi-Capraesque cliches about the ‘Good War’. Similarly, the violence in SCHINDLER’S LIST is so hellish that you wanna grab onto some semblance of meaning, indeed ANY kind of meaning, and Spielberg/Zaillian offers it to you in the form of Jewish sainthood and Redemption by hugging Saintly Jews. Though SCHINDLER’S LIST is about a good ‘Aryan’ saving Jews held hostage by the evil Nazis, the audience is emotionally held hostage by Spielberg who abducts and beats their emotions so brutally that they subconsciously beg him for mercy. So, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome operates in how such a movie works the audience. We become emotionally owned by the director who then dictates the terms by which we may be given emotional reprieve. Spielberg plays both Hitler and Schindler. He puts the audience in a cinematic death camp and brutalizes their emotions, and then he offers to save them from this hell IF we agree with his message of comfort: goyim must hug and love Saintly Jews. After ‘witnessing’ ‘innocent Jews’ get murdered left and right by heartless Nazis, we want to trust the filmmakers. We think, “if the courageous filmmakers are going THIS FAR to show the Holocaust as it really was, why would they lie about other things about the story?” Similarly, after we watch the American G.I.s get killed left and right in the opening scene of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, we want to believe in the characters and story. We feel as if we’ve seen real men die at Normandy, and so we wonder why Spielberg and Zaillian, who went to such lengths to depict combat with such veracity, would lie to us about other aspects of the war.
The sheer horror of the violence, the harsh depiction of ‘reality’, makes us paradoxically long for a fairytale as a kind of cushion. After seeing so many Jews get killed in SCHINDLER’S LIST, we want Schindler to play George Bailey(of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE). After seeing so many G.I.’s get killed, we wanna believe in the goodness of the US government and American G.I’s that go out of their way to save the young apple-cheeked Ryan ― but then, this simplemindedness is masked with token moments that show the America G.I.s to be ‘flawed’, and such faux-complexity and ‘irony’ hoodwink the audience into believing that they watching serious‘art and not just entertainment or propaganda. The first time I saw the two movies, I too found myself deeply moved and hoping and going ooh-ah when the Jews or Ryan were saved. But, both movies are utterly bogus fairytales wrapped in realism. Thus, while Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers with an almost musical mastery of the medium, he’s never been a true artist in the higher sense of that word. He’s not a digger or teller of truth but a peddler of fairytales ― and without any irony, unless, ‘wink wink’ noticed by other Jews. (The sole exception is A.I. a ‘fairytale’ peering into its own commercial and psychological machinations behind the fairytale. It raises an interesting question about lies and truth: can lies be used to the tell the truth? If movies are a lie, i.e. works of fiction, can they tell us anything about truth? Should we rely on non-fiction than fiction? But aren’t even non-fiction films fictional in the sense that they are narratives selectively assembled from a mountain of often contradictory and mutually negating ‘facts’? If you select and favor one group of facts over another group of facts, how much truth are you telling? By not showing the other group of facts, are you not offering only one side of truth, and isn’t a half-truth also a half-lie? Also, even if two filmmakers were to use the same set of facts, the way in which those facts are interpreted, assembled, edited, and narrated ― and what sound effects are used ― will determine the ‘nature’ of those facts. Thus, an Israeli filmmaker and Palestinian filmmaker can use the same historical footage and same factual details, but by their selective use of words ― ‘excesses’ instead of ‘atrocities’, ‘advance’ instead of ‘invasion’, as well as a host of other colorful adjectives and tone of narration ― , they can present very different ‘realities’. Thus, movies ― and all forms of art ― are as much conveyers of lies as of truth. Also, if the primary truth of existence is time and if time constantly flows and wipes away the past, the preservation of the past through art is a kind of lie. Art makes us ‘believe’ the past is still with us when it is no more. Shakespeare and the world he portrayed is brought back to life whenever his plays are performed. We watch movies about the ancient past by suspending disbelief that we are in the present. In some ways, the more accurate the movie, the greater its lie. Hollywood historical movies look so fake that few people would mistake them for the past, but ANDREI RUBLEV and PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID make us feel transported to another place and time. The world of ANDREI RUBLEV looks and feels like what Medieval Russia might have really been like. Thus, in conveying a greater truth, it also fools us with the greater lie. An obvious lie fools no one, but a great magic trick fools everyone. ANDREI RUBLEV goes beyond magic; it’s a work of hypnosis that makes us forget that we are watching a movie in the modern era. But, this brings us back to the problem posed by A.I. Is there anything that we can obtain and hold as the absolute truth? The child robot in A.I. is, in some ways, ‘more human than human’ ― like the Replicants of BLADE RUNNER ― , but that’s precisely why he’s the bigger lie. The more humanlike a robot becomes, a bigger lie of a human he is. But in having become so humanlike, we feel an obligation to treat him like a human. It’s both touching and dangerous, both humanizing and dehumanizing. Same goes for art. The more art becomes ‘real’ and lifelike, the more we are likely to see it as a version of history. Consider the impact of SCHINDLER’S LIST on American culture and politics. Some American governor even decreed it as required viewing material in schools. It’s one thing to require kids to watch actual footage from World War II or the Holocaust but to treat a work of fiction almost as a historical document? As powerful and realistic as SCHINDLER’S LIST is, it’s not reality but recreated reality. It has become like A.H. or Artificial History, but one that looks so real that some people favor it over the real thing. “More historical than history is our motto.” Trying to access the truth through art is thus like trying to find truth through lies, and this is the feature of language itself. Words are symbols representing reality, but they are not actual pieces of reality. Words are useful as a thinking tool but also the monkey wrench thrown in the works. If we try to understand and fix the problem of words, we must again use words to fix the problem of words. It’s like trying to dry oneself with water. The same problem exists with consciousness, the core of our understanding of reality. In order to understand consciousness, we must use consciousness. But if we are trapped within consciousness, how can we truly understand consciousness ‘objectively’. We are trapped in subjectivity striving for objectivity, but even the objectivity that we’ve been able to achieve came through subjective mental activities, as even the greatest scientist sees and studies the world through his own unique mind. And there’s also the problem of the mind itself being a fantasy machine. We’d like to think in terms of ‘my mind thinks of reality’ and ‘the movie tells a fantasy’, but in a way, movies are projections of the fantastic workings of the mind. Even our view of reality and actual events are colored by the ‘fantastic’ ways we prefer to see reality. This is as true of personal reality as well as socio-political reality. People generally want to feel good and gravitate toward news, information, and spin that confirms that sense of ‘rightness’. Thus, Creationists choose the ‘facts’ that confirm their belief in God’s Creation of the universe, and ‘gay marriage’ advocates make believe that homosexuality has the same biological and moral value as real sexuality, thus Heather can have ‘two mommies’. Christian Right cannot see how Creationism is less scientific than evolutionary theory, and ‘gay marriage’ advocates cannot see how homosexuality has less biological/moral value than real sexuality. Both call for an ‘inclusive’ definition of science and marriage either to accommodate ‘creationism’ as real science or accommodate ‘gay marriage’ as real marriage. Given that the sense of rightness is so crucial to most people, their minds construct a fantasy that wards off elements of reality undermining of their fantasy as the source of rightness and righteousness. Thus, what passes for sophistication among many people is really just sophistry, especially amusing since even most ‘intelligent’ and ‘independent-minded’ liberals are silly little dolts spouting the same tired cliches made fashionable by political correctness controlled by cunning and clever Jews. Because liberalism was getting so old and tired with its ‘correct’ cliches on race, the gay agenda has been useful in injecting the movement with some fresh blood, even if HIV-tainted. Since blacks got equality long time ago but used that equality to rob, loot, and act crazy, liberals themselves got somewhat tired of their cliches of yesteryear. Besides, what with MLK as the secular god of America and everything, black issues are no longer so cutting-edge. And since feminists ruined their brand with neo-puritanical ideology of the Bitchy Hag ― which most young women rejected since the late 80s ― , what else is left but the ‘gay thing’? Also, liberals prefer the gay thing since it’s more fun, goofy, colorful, and flamboyant than most other features of liberalism. Blacks used to be fun but got tiresome with the same yapping and rapping. Hispanics don’t seem to be very appealing to liberals, and neither are Asians, except for Asian chicks who put out to dorky SWPL white males. And though the Holocaust thing is very big, Jewish victim-hood is hardly a feature of American life despite all the hysteria from ADL and $PLC. So, there is this great emphasis on gays, who are supposed to be colorful, creative, funny, subversive, and hip. And by golly, they come in four full flavors: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual, aka trans-gender. Btw, if transsexuals are called ‘trans-gender’, shouldn’t homosexuals be called ‘homogenderists’ and shouldn’t bisexuals be called ‘bigenderists’? All these silly labels never made much sense. Given the nature of gay culture, liberals find supporting the gay agenda more fun than supporting other causes. Gays aren’t just for certain agendas but very colorful in their activism. This may account for the popularity of ‘slut walk pride parades’ among neo-feminists. If old school feminism wore ‘drab’ clothes and had armpit hair and carried colorless placards, ‘slut walks’ can be fun with girls dressing up like hookers and strutting all around like drag queens. Our society has become so decadent and trivial that such things now pass for the paragon of moral virtue and fighting for ‘just causes’.)
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is not about good guys vs bad guys even though Billy is presented in a positive light. But if the film has any character who might be deemed contemptible if not exactly villainous, it’s Poe(John Beck). Poe seems roughly around Billy’s age. He idolizes powerful men like Chisum; he’s for progress and taming the land. He catches up with Garrett at a campfire and offers his assistance in tracking down Billy. Though Poe is indeed rather despicable, he is one of the more interesting and crucial characters in the film, at least as both an emotional barrier and bridge between Garrett and other characters. And though Poe is a bully and coward, we can’t help feeling a little sorry for him because he tries so hard to be a somebody but is wanted by nobody. Poe is like a teacher’s pet disliked by the teacher; he’s a tail-wagging dog kicked out of the house by the master. Despite his servility, he talks and acts big. He’s a dog trying to fool others that his yapping bark is a wolfish howl. For all his tough guy act, his macho antics are a crutch to hide his basic insecurity(and sense of inadequacy). He needs to feel superior precisely because he feels so inferior, and in this regard, he has something in common with Hitler and many people in the White Nationalist movement, who make a big fuss about ‘honor’, ‘manhood’, ‘superiority’, ‘spirituality’, and ‘purity’ because they themselves are plagued by a sense of physical, sexual, and/or intellectual inadequacy. Thus, they fashion their self-contempt into contempt for humanity ― since most people are ‘losers’ just like themselves ― and then use that contempt as superiorist crutch with which to prop up their inflated egos. Some examples are Greg Johnson, the miserable Hitler-worshiper at COUNTER-CURRENTS and the slimy Alex Kurtagic, a neo-Nazi ‘Aryanist’ with swarthy Arab-like features. Kurtagic is a toady supremacist, a third-rater wishing to think himself as something special by ‘intellectually’ and ‘creatively’ associating himself with SUPERIOR things, but the silly fool wouldn’t know what real superiority looked like if it stared at him in the face. His idea of an ideal woman is the wife of Joseph Goebbels, and his idea of great music is second-rate New Age cliches spun by a band called Winglord. Since Kurtagic possesses no superior qualities whatsoever ― indeed those who do generally have integrity enough not to brag about them, preferring to demonstrate them through actual deeds and accomplishments than empty boasts ― , he has to turn superiority into a therapeutic monument. It’s like Third World nations that can’t build a functional economy erecting huge sculptures to glorify their pretend-greatness. The white nationalist community is generally so lacking in brains, creativity, or even sanity that the only way they can pretend to be great is by turning ‘greatness’ into a symbol, and of course, Nazis were masters at this. Though Nazi artists mostly produced awful sculptures and paintings, what did it matter as long as they thematically represented ‘Aryan’ superiority? It’s like a kid who can’t draw drawing himself as Superman and then bragging to his classmates that he’s superior because he celebrates himself as a super-hero. Kurtagic, intoxicated with the ‘superiorist’ themes in black metal(a musical genre worse even than hip hop), comic book illustrations of Vikings, and images of Nazi ‘art’, has managed to convince himself that he too must be one of the greatest thinkers and artists of all time. Like the hideous creep Heinrich Himmler, whom he resembles in more ways than one, Kurtagic is a ‘loser’ whose sense of superiority is really the product of psychotic self-inflation via loopy association with comic book themes and empty symbolism. A corollary to the White Nationalist mind-set as embodied by the likes of Kurtagic was the fervor of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. The Red thugs were laying China to waste, but as long as they waved red flags and spouted mindless slogans, they made believe that they represented the vanguard of world revolution. Of course, not all White Nationalists are like this, and there are some sane people in the movement who are less fixated on ‘superiority’ ― as mask to hide their inferiority ― and more concerned with the real interests of white people. But, sane people seem to be outnumbered by stupid liars, which is why almost no one talks about one of the biggest dangers faced by whites: the reason for black-on-white violence. Though white nationalists often discuss issues of black crime, almost none dares to explain the why, and of course the truth is that blacks are tougher and stronger than whites. But most white nationalists, addicted to some bullshit notion of ‘superiority’, cannot face this fact because it hurts their precious white male pride. Instead, they yammer endlessly about how whites are smarter than Negroes, a fact that, while true, doesn’t explain why there’s so much black-on-white violence. A dumb black guy wouldn’t be a danger to smart white guy if both were physically equal. So, even though many white people are suffering due to black violence abetted by black muscular advantage, white nationalists are loathe to discuss it. Jews are much smarter than White Nationalists in this regard: Jews, though immensely powerful and intelligent, don’t go around saying they’re superior. While Jews privately know they’re smarter than goyim and discuss such matters among themselves, Jews don’t make a big fuss of it and thereby manage to avoid hostile resentment from less fortunate goyim. In contrast, though many white people are underprivileged and suffering, the influence of White Nationalism has only filled them with the delusion of sham ‘superiority’ and ‘power’ they don’t possess. Powerful Jews, by officially not claiming superiority, come across as powerless, while white nationalists, by claiming superiority, come across as all-powerful when, in fact, they have almost no power. Indeed, White Nationalist ideology is most popular among underclass whites, who are not exactly the most intelligent and powerful people in the world. They are outwitted by Jews ― and by smarter white liberals ― , they are beaten up by blacks, and they are flooded with junk culture. Yet, some of these white trash join white nationalist movements and put on ‘superiorist’ acts like they’re something special. Instead of honestly assessing what their problems are and formulating a real humanist strategy for their collective interest, they fantasize that they are superior beings because they listen to black metal, hang Nazi flags on their bedroom walls, deny the Holocaust, and got a swastika tattoo on their butts. Imagine that: powerful Jews act like they got no power, and powerless white trash act like they’re masters of the universe ― when they’re getting whupped left and right by Negroes. I mean it’s almost surreal. No wonder it’s been easy for organizations like NAACP, ADL, and SPLC to sound the alarm about ‘white supremacism’. White idiots don’t even know how to suffer; they don’t even know how to be victims. Though victimized by Jewish brains/trickery and by Negro brawn/thuggery, too many white trash act like they’re Conan the Barbarian or something. Since the powerful act powerless while the powerless act powerful, it’s easy for powerful Jews to point to powerless white trash as if the latter got all the power. It’s funny really. It was idiots like Kurtagic who ruined the promising fascist movement from the beginning, and they’re mucking it all up again with their bogus BS about ‘superiority’.
The character Poe has some of the characteristics common among white nationalists and even among conservatives in general, which is one reason why conservatism has rarely been considered ‘cool’. Poe, lacking individuality and ‘greatness’ himself, tries to inflate his self-worth by attaching himself to powerful men and grand themes(like law & order). So, Poe speaks highly of Chisum though they never met. To Poe, Chisum is a ‘great man’, a real giant, and the West needs men like Chisum for it to be fully settled and whipped into shape. On one level, Poe is an idealist with a vision for the West; at least ostensibly, he seems to think beyond the self-interest that defines Garrett and Billy. Garrett chooses the Law because he wants to get off the nomadic saddle and secure a firm chair for his tired behind. Billy chooses ‘freedom’ because he’s having too much fun. Poe, in contrast, seems willing to join with a bigger cause and work for the higher good. He also seems to have certain moral scruples, as when he disapproves of Garrett’s whoring around with four or five women in the same bed. But Poe is essentially despicable. Not because of his ideals or vision but because he uses them as a crutch for his insecurity and inadequacy. Thus, he’s not a true idealist but a user of idealism to mask his power-lust. He’s also a bully and a coward. Though he looks up to Big Men and puts on a tough guy act, his nerves fail him when he has the opportunity to kill Billy. Indeed, he prefers to beat up old men and women. Bullies are cowards in that they feel tough only by picking on smaller and weaker victims. Even his admiration for powerful men like Chisum seems toady-like ― and of course, toadies are sidekick bullies. Poe likes to suck up to the powerful and trample on the weak. He’s a bully-coward justifying his bullying cowardice behind the veneer of civilization and order. He’s not for the Law & Order out of a love of humanity but because he despises humanity and thinks it should be ruled like cattle by ‘great men’ like Chisum. And by identifying with men like Chisum, Poe sees himself as a member of select club of special men. In such manner is Poe like some White Nationalists. (To be sure, there are plenty of such people on the Left as well. A bunch of nobodies will imaginatively associate themselves with ‘great men’ like Che Guevara and think themselves special because they are part of a ‘great cause’; and that’s the appeal of the Cult of Obama, i.e. a whole bunch of SWPL losers and nobodies think they are part of something special because they worship the Big Cool Dude Obama. But, the problem may still more acute among rightists than leftists in the sense that the Right is more nakedly about power than the Left is. Though both Right and Left are obsessed with power, Right is more likely to admire power for power’s sake whereas the Left values power as a tool for justice. And this is one reason why communism is considered morally superior to fascism. Fascism, as most people understand it ― wrongfully, but that’s another issue ― , simply means worship of raw power for the sake of power. Communism, on the other hand, is seen as a revolution against oppressive power to gain righteous power to liberate the masses. So, while both the Right and Left are for power, the Right is for the worship and submission to concentrated power whereas the Left is about resistance to concentrated power to empower everyone equally. Right is about obedience to hierarchical power whereas the Left is about the leveling of power. Left uses power to fight power, like ‘fight fire with fire’. Theoretically anyway, the Left is not interested in power per se but in ensuring that no one has oppressive power over others. Of course, human nature being what it is, we know the Left is full of shit. Those who rise to prominence under any ideology and system are always individuals obsessed with power for power’s sake. Also, the only way to enforce equality is by concentrating power in certain institutions, and so Leftism becomes self-defeating. Worse, over time, even the institutions whose role was to ensure equality use their power and privileges for their own interests, which is why the Castro brothers in Cuba are amongst the richest people in Latin America. And what eventually became of the Soviet Union and Communist China? And what’s the state of ‘communist’ Vietnam today? Some say North Korea, along with Cuba, is the only truly communist state left in the world, but how equal is that society, where the elites pig out on gourmet food imported from abroad while millions live on the edge of starvation? But Leftist hypocrisy doesn’t mean that the Right is necessarily better. The Right may be psychologically more honest about power ― Nietzsche wins over Marx in this regard ― , but there is something ugly about toady-ism so common in the conservative mind. Though leftists can be ideologically bullying and vicious, on a personal basis conservatives are more likely to be bullies than liberals are. The story of the Buchanan boys in RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING is pretty sordid. It’s mostly about big guys intoxicated in their own machismo starting fights with mostly weaker victims. You get the impression that Buchanan boys in the 50s had a great time pushing everyone around who wasn’t part of their culture or community. And from my personal observation, most of the white bullies in schools tended to be of the ‘conservative mind’, by which I don’t necessarily mean conservative politics. Many people with the ‘conservative mind’ are apolitical; they tend to be cynical about the system and will never cast a ballot. But they are of the ‘conservative’ mind-set because of the things they gravitate toward: military, police, guns, professional wrestling, and etc. Like Poe, they put on the tough guy act, but since most of them aren’t really all that tough, they pick on smaller kids or on girls. There was one kid in high school ― who later joined the Marines and then became a nutjob White Nationalist ― who used to pick on fat girls in the school bus. Mr. Tough Guy took pleasure in going ‘mooooooo’ and shouting ‘pig’ or ‘whale’ to fat girls and making them cry. He would say things about blacks but NEVER to their faces because he was afraid of them. He was a typical coward-bully with a ‘conservative’ mind-set. Now, most conservative people are, of course, not like this. Most are decent people and don’t mean any harm, but there is a kind of ‘conservative’ personality whose self-worth depends on tearing other people down. There’s some of this in Rush Limbaugh, a blubbery fatso lardass pig who puts down people on the basis of looks but gets all touchy when people mention his fatass-ness. Of course, bullying personality isn’t limited to the Right and certainly not only among whites. Generally, it appears school bullying is a much bigger problem in Japan than in white America. But then, Japan is culturally a conservative society where school authorities ignore or even condone bullying as a social mechanism to keep everyone in his place. In a militaristic society, even school officials tend to see bullying as a means to toughen kids up or cower them into conformity/hierarchy. In this regard, there is something paradoxical about bullying. Military boot-camp training is essentially institutionalized bullying, with Drill sergeants hurling verbal and physical abuse at fresh recruits. The intention and effect are both meant to harden the soldiers into ‘real men’ and to weaken them into obedient running like dogs. Thus, a soldier is both a fierce warrior and a mental slave. In a nation like Japan or Old Prussia, men were shaped by a culture of militarism ― social if not necessarily political, as Japan is officially a ‘liberal democracy’ ― , and so the Japanese equate the attainment of manhood with the grinding process of bullying. Just as kids who were abused by parents are more likely to abuse their own kids, a populace that grew up under a culture of bullying is more likely to condone bullying in general. Though they hated to be bullied in their youth, the fact that they took the blows as necessary rituals for attaining adulthood makes them overlook the bullying that is done by and/or to their own kids; also, the yrs of bullying and other social pressures drummed into them make most Japanese parents unwilling to complain to authorities about wrongs done to their kids. If one side of their character has been permanently toughened by bullying, another side has been permanently cowed by it. Japanese, having been turned into conformist drones, are too afraid to step up to the plate and demand social reforms and accountability in schools and government. But then, Americans are cowardly in their own ways, and if anything, the Western examples in both the US and EU shows that forms of anti-bullying, once radicalized, can also turn into mindless forms of bullying. There was a time when blacks felt bullied by rednecks, and so there was a social movement to bring about racial equality. But since blacks are physically tougher than whites, the removal of special privileges for whites led to massive black bullying of whites. But because of the cult of ‘anti-racism’, we’ve all been ideologically bullied with the false notion that blacks are ― and must be ― protected as the permanent victims of whites. Thus, even though black-on-white violence is common across the country, we are force-fed bullshit like the character of the mountain-sized Negro that wouldn’t hurt a wittle white mouse in THE GREEN MILE. Though ‘anti-racism’ is sold as an anti-racial-bullying measure, what it really does is conceal and/or justify black bullying of whites. Most cases of black-on-white violence are either suppressed by the media or spun to morally excuse the rage of blacks, as in the Jena Six case. And people who discuss
black-on-white violence are bullied into silence or blacklisted by the Jew-run media. And the gay agenda has also become bullying in its own way. Though at one time, gays were among the most badly bullied people in America ― and so it made sense for gays to come together and demand that they be left alone ― , gay power today, with the help of Jewish power, morally, socially, politically, culturally, and legally bullies and buttfuc*s everyone. So, if you don’t agree with the sick gay agenda that says fecal penetration is the biological/moral equivalent of real sex or if you oppose the demented notion of ‘gay marriage’, you are labeled as a clinically sick ‘homophobe’ who should be blacklisted, fired, hounded, and attacked 24/7. Thus, what started out as anti-bullying turned into another form of bullying, but if the history of Christianity tells us anything, this is nothing new. Remember Christians of the ‘turn the other cheek’ school? Once they took power, they made sure to turn the cheeks of non-Christians by slapping them bloody red until they too accepted the Glory of Christ. Once people get a taste of power, they cannot stop. They just have to gain more power, more control, and more influence. Part of the reason is due to the dynamics of leadership. Suppose most Christians weren’t really extreme. But ‘most’ people don’t become leaders or even want to become leaders, just like most people are nervous about making public speeches. It’s only a small number of people who want to lead, and such people tend to be especially power-hungry. So, no matter what platform they choose, they are likely to push it to extremes and fan the flames of passion among the unwashed masses. Consider the rise of Bolsheviks and Nazis. Many Russians supported the Bolsheviks for simple generic reasons like ‘land, bread, and peace’. But Bolshevik leaders wanted total power and absolute control of the nation, and so they pushed the most radical policies. And same with rise of Hitler. Many Germans voted for the Nazi party because they wanted some social and political order and economic recovery. They didn’t want another war or radical stuff like committing mass murder of certain races. But Hitler was not your average German but a power-mad demagogue. There is something inherently radical about power-lust regardless of ideology, religion, and etc. This is why all ‘great men’, regardless of ideology, should be watched with great skepticism. Though you may want to support a ‘great’ person out of shared ideology or values, a man who wants to be leader isn’t driven only by ideology or values alone but by mad lust for power. And in order to justify their power, ‘leaders of men’ feel the temptation to radicalize their ideology, religion, or agenda ― or deify their own image by ‘radicalizing’ themselves into human gods ― in order to maintain the cutting edge in the competition for power. If Bolshevik leaders had agreed with most Russians, they would have lost their edge once ‘land, bread, and peace’ were made available to most Russians. And Hitler would have lost his edge once most Germans were content with social order, jobs, and peace. In order for people like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao to justify their power, they had to be more than ‘with the people’. They had to be ‘ahead of and above the people’; only that way could they justify their ‘right’ to lead the masses. The same dynamic can be seen among black leaders, gay leaders, and Jewish leaders. For black leaders to stay relevant and justify their privileged positions, they must constantly scream ‘racism’. For gay leaders to remain on top, they must sound the alarm on ‘homophobia’ in ever higher frequency. For Jewish leaders to maintain their special status, they must find ‘antisemitism’ everywhere. Because if these ‘leaders’ fail to maintain the ‘edge’, there would be precious little justification for their power. But this is true among conservatives as well, which is there’s been so many bogus conservatives issues about ‘school prayer’, ‘pledge of allegiance’, ‘teaching Creationism or Intelligent Design in biology classes’, and ‘pro-life’ nonsense. This isn’t to doubt that some people have genuine conviction for these positions but merely to point out that conservative ‘leaders’ have sometimes radicalized so-called ‘hot button issues’ into hysteria to whip up support for their ‘leadership’. American conservatism would be in better shape if it had been argued along rationalist and responsible lines dealing with real issues than along hysterical lines concerning utterly meaning issues like ‘school prayer’ and ‘pledge of allegiance’. I mean does anyone really think our school problems ― especially in black public schools ― can be fixed with having kids mutter prayers or cite the pledge of allegiance? And what is so great about banning abortion when great many abortions are done by black women on welfare? Would you rather spend $500 to abort a black child or spend $500,000 to raise that child by providing him or her with free everything, only to have the cute little monkey grow into a big bad gorilla who goes around robbing, raping, and murdering?)
Though Poe is despicable, he is pitiable in the scene where he finally meets up with Chisum, his hero. (But then, being the object of pity comes with humiliation that fuels even greater rage and resentment. This is why white conservative pity for Jewish suffering may paradoxically make Jews hate white conservatives even more. Even though Jews demand that we feel pity for them, our pity also fills them with humiliation ― that such a great people as themselves must be the object of pity of a bunch of dimwit goyim ― and this makes Jews want to destroy white conservatives even more. A people of great pride feel insulted by pity. This is also why the newly rising China is such an a**hole nation. For thousands of years, Chinese saw themselves as being at the center of the universe. But then, the Chinese became the object of scorn and then pity during the horrible 20th century. But as China rises, Chinese feel insulted not only by the wrongs done to them but by the pity that small rich nations felt for them. Similarly, a lot of blacks are not impressed by white liberal compassion since it makes blacks the object of pity. Blacks, filled with pride as the badass, creative, musical, and sexy race, don’t wanna be the object of pity, don’t wanna be no Uncle Tom. So, even as blacks demand ‘white guilt’ and more freebies from whites, they want those things in the form of accession to powerful blacks demands than as objects of goodwill on the part of whites for pitiful Negroes who be shucking and ho-de-doing for some handouts.) Chisum is around Garrett’s age, maybe a little older. He’s a tough, smart, and hardened man. He knows what power is and how to use it. He has few if any illusions and can instinctively measure a man’s worth or a situation in an instant. So, when Poe accompanies Garrett to Chisum’s ranch, Poe thinks he’s in the presence of greatness, but Chisum immediately sizes up Poe as a second-rate social-climber. Chisum even tests and humiliates Poe with mock hospitality: Chisum asks Garrett if he’s staying for supper, but Garrett understands Chisum was just being polite and properly declines the offer, but Poe, dummy that he is, says he could use some supper like a hungry dog. Chisum finds Poe’s triply pathetic: (1). Poe rode in with Garrett but asks for supper when Garrett, the leader of the two, declined. Poe doesn’t know how to be a team-player, rather ironic since we heard him make such noise about how the West needs to be tamed by ‘great men’. Poe, for all his highfaluting talk, thinks more with his gut than with his head. He lacks even the most basic of social grace. (2). The manner in which Poe says he’d like supper is rather childish. He mutters, “... yes, I could eat”, like the kid in OLIVER TWIST asking, “Can I have a little more?” To a hard man like Chisum, a real man either declines the offer like Garrett or makes it known loud and clear that he’s hungry and needs some food. Poe flunks in his first impression on Chisum. (3). Poe seems to be rather dim and pitiful. Chisum tells Poe that he can get some food from the bunkhouse from the ranch cook as a dismissive putdown, and the disoriented Poe slowly rides over toward the bunkhouse. Poe probably thought Chisum would invite him into the house and serve a special meal ― from a ‘great man’ to a ‘great man in training’ ― , but to Chisum, Poe is just one more cowpoke who’s all bluster and no substance. There is a certain greatness about Chisum precisely because he has no use for concepts of ‘great man’. He doesn’t care for the cult of power but for real power, and he knows real power comes through a lot of hard work, intelligence, industry, ruthlessness, and keen instinct. One doesn’t become great by making a big show of one’s greatness ― unless one has the backing of superrich Jews as Obama did in 2008. Chisum may be a son of a bitch, but he represents some of the virtues of the Anglo-American character: He proves himself by deeds, action, and achievement. He doesn’t need to boast or make a spectacle of himself like aristocrats of Europe or Latin America. And we can readily tell that Chisum is one person that Garrett doesn’t mess with. Chisum not only has money and influence but character and grit to take on any man one-on-one. Perhaps, the film as a whole would have been more interesting if Chisum had been given a bigger role. The inclusion of the scene at Chisum’s ranch is by far the best improvement over the theatrical version. Chisum, as character(superbly played by Barry Sullivan) and centrifugal force, would have added some vitality to counter the dramatic inertia that envelopes Garrett and Billy.
For starters, the film doesn’t make it clear how Garrett and Billy could have been such good friends. Billy the Kid died at the age of 21 while Garrett in the film looks around 50. So, what happened? Did a 40 yr old Garrett ride around with a 10 yr old Billy? Historically, the age difference between Garrett and Billy wasn’t as great as in the film. Let’s assume that the Billy of the movie is supposed to be older than the historical Billy ― and indeed Kristofferson as Billy looks closer to 30 than to 20. Then, Garrett and Billy could have been good friends at one time, but we’re left with little clue as to the nature of their friendship. It’s a kind of a hard swallow to believe that someone like Garrett, even as an outlaw, could have spent much time hanging around ne’er-do-wells like Billy and his slacker gang who seem too lazy even to get out of bed to rustle cattle. Even with the opening scene that establishes Billy’s relation to Garrett, their friendship is something we have to take on faith. It’s not something we can readily believe in like the tortured/complicated friendship between Pike Bishop and Deke Thorton, between Dundee and Tyreen, between the James Caan character and the Robert Duvall character in THE KILLER ELITE, and between the Rutger Hauer character and the Craig Nelson character in THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND. Friend-enemies, aka ‘frenemies’, are a staple of Peckinpah movies, but for all the great things about PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, we don’t really believe in the emotional link/tension between Garrett and Billy, and so Garrett’s killing of Billy, though branded as tragedy, doesn’t feel like one. We don’t get a sense that Garrett killed his friend or betrayed anyone of special meaning to him. It feels more like he killed an estranged acquaintance who never meant much to him. And this emotional deadness owes I think, to Peckinpah’s alienation from the Counterculture as represented by Kris Kristofferson. Peckinpah the elder pretended in the film that 60s generation rebels were the new cowboys embodying the spirit of the West, but he didn’t feel it in his heart; and boomer admirers of Peckinpah pretended to see him as a pioneer maverick, as one of their own, but in truth, there were huge cultural and generational differences that kept them apart ― just like Ron Paul and his young supporters, though united in cause and ideology, are far apart culturally and morally. Ron Paul is against the ‘war on drugs’ not because he likes drugs ― he loathes them ― but because he finds it unconstitutional, whereas many of his younger supporters are against the ‘war on drugs’ because they wanna use drugs.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID’s problem stems not from the subject of youth but from the pandering to youth. Peckinpah’s direction of Mariette Hartley in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY showed his understanding of youth. And the young-old dynamic in THE WILD BUNCH was multi-layered, with Old Man Sykes as the oldest and Angel as the youngest. Below Sykes was Pike and below Pike was Dutch and the Gorch Brothers. To the Gorch brothers, Pike is an old man, and to Pike, Sykes is an old man. STRAW DOGS had an interesting old-young dynamic, with young town thugs under the authority of a bullish old patriarch. At his best, Peckinpah refused to sentimentalize old age or youth. In PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, however, Peckinpah tries to convince himself with what he really doesn’t believe.
The film was made during the Vietnam War and Watergate, and the hip thing to do then was throw one’s lot with ‘youth’. Peckinpah, though of conservative political bent, voted for McGovern in 1972 for anti-war reasons. Just as he tried to convince himself that McGovern was the better man, he tried to convince himself that Billy and his gang stood for something noble, but from the evidence on screen, the conceit wasn’t convincing. (The attraction of youth to aging men has been a common theme throughout history. It’s the grandparent/grandchildren syndrome. Young people, resentful of the immediate authority ― parents, teachers, cops, bosses, etc. ― over them, look to older or famous people for guidance, approval, and validation. Paradoxically, they find liberation via a slavish devotion to the grand master. It’s like Luke Skywalker coming under the tutelage of Ben Kenobi and Yoda. As for older or famous people ― especially anxious about their waning relevance/influence ― , the impressionable/gullible/enthusiastic/fawning
young people serve as a new vitalized fanbase. Thus, as Mao’s influence waned after the Great Leap Forward, he appealed to the young people to ‘Bombard the Headquarters’ and unleashed the Cultural Revolution. Hitler could rely on the Hitler Youth to the very end. Aldous Huxley found a new cult following among the young in the 50s and 60s with DOORS OF PERCEPTION and THE ISLAND. Herbert Marcuse’s biggest fans were college kids in the 60s. Mishima built a private army of Japanese youths of simple peasant stock who worshiped him as a god. Howard Zinn was and Noam Chomsky is much revered by young people. Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre were fawned on by the faithful young, and they basked in the mindless adulation. Consider the special relationship between the aging Ben Jonson character and the two young men in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. Or between John Wayne and the young girl in TRUE GRIT. Or between Lee Marvin and the young punks in THE DIRTY DOZEN.) And given the demands of his metier, the profession of cinema, Peckinpah couldn’t ‘drop out’ like Ken Kesey ― who, in terms of background and philosophy, had something in common with Peckinpah ― and travel with the hippies. To be a filmmake meant to be a commander of men, a general. A film could not be made in the way of the Merry Pranksters. Perhaps, many of the young actors signed on to PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, expecting it to be like traveling with the Grateful Dead or joining a hippie commune, only to find the actual shooting a grueling experience down in Mexico against the elements, poverty, disease, money problems, technical problems, and Peckinpah’s increasingly erratic behavior that was like Patton crossed with Charles Manson. Peckinpah used all sorts of drugs in his life, but he was essentially a drinker whereas most of the young guys were stoners. Peckinpah liked to get drunk and talk angry; young guys liked to get stoned and get mellow. They really didn’t have much in common.
Peckinpah’s behavior and art, on some level, confirmed the notion that emotionally/physically abused people go on to abuse other people in turn, though it must be said the meaning of ‘abuse’ is relative depending on the place, time, and personalities involved. Though Peckinpah’s father wasn’t abusive in the strict sense of the word, a willful personality like Peckinpah might have taken the old man’s sternness the wrong way. What most kids might have accepted as discipline, Peckinpah might have seen as punishment, even abuse, though having grown up in a culture of ‘toughness’, Peckinpah never aired his complaints ― but then, the repression of his childhood rage might have made him more volatile later in life. (In a way, his mother’s influence may have been just as important or even more important on Peckinpah. If his father was sometimes ‘overly’ stern, his mother was sensitive and neurotic. Some might even argue that dealing with parental neurosis is or can fee like a form of ‘abuse’, and maybe Peckinpah never resolved his issues about women, marriage, children, and alcohol because of certain emotional complexes having to do with his mother.) Also, assuming that his upbringing was mostly normal, Peckinpah grew up in a culture that put a premium on manhood and toughness. Take the scene in THE BIG COUNTRY(directed by William Wyler) with Burl Ives as the patriarch of the White Trash Clan. He’s one tough guy and admirable in many ways, but his hardness can also be overbearing, cruel, and inhuman. He fails to see that his son(Chuck Connors) is a bully-coward piece of turd as a result of having been hounded and pounded by his pa from the cradle; sonny boy knows he can never measure up to his old man and so he goes for easy pickings and even hits a woman. While the son was probably born with turdy genes, he likely became especially turd-like because of a blend of bratty privilege and wounding humiliation ― a sense of privilege of being the son of the grand patriarch of the White Trash Clan and sense of humiliation from being unable to live up to his father’s expectations. Burl Ives character wants his son to be a real man, and he measures manhood by a man’s ability to stand his ground and fight. So, when his son gets into a fisticuff with the Gregory Peck character, the old man watches with glee. But when the son, after getting knocked down, pulls out his gun, the old man intercedes and calls for a proper duel worthy of a real man. The old man does have a sense of fairness. He’s offended by the idea of his son shooting an unarmed man. But, he’s willing to risk his son’s life in the name of manhood and honor. He likes to pit one guy against the next guy. And the other grand patriarch of the movie ― head of the Rich White Folks Clan ― pretty much shares the same values and outlook. They think in terms of Manhood, Tribalism, Honor, and Toughness. They can’t make head or tails out of the Gregory Peck character from the East who cares more for manners than manhood. Peck’s character thinks fighting for Honor is stupid, but others see him as a coward. Peck’s character is interesting because he’s ‘liberal’ on the outside but ‘conservative’ on the inside. Though he thinks it’s stupid for a man to prove his worth by fighting or taming a wild horse in front of others, he has to prove to himself that he can duke it out with the best and, yes, tame a wild horse no one’s been able to. He says Honor doesn’t matter, at least in proving it to others, but he has to prove it to himself. Anyway, the culture on display in THE BIG COUNTRY has no place for sentimentality ― unless it’s for a woman, but even most Western women like a tough hard men, which may be why all those Texan girls today are just wild about Negro athletes on their highschool football teams ― , and it expects men to duke it out for the sake of honor. Peckinpah was never a big strong guy, and so he might have developed an exaggerated sense of toughness, and since alcohol gave him the courage to be wild and crazy, he took to a lot of boozing.
It’s been said that Peckinpah loved to instigate hostilities and tension on the movie set among different members of the crew. And he made it well known who were privileged and who were not. He treated most crew members like Burl Ives character treated Chuck Connors and Gregory Peck in THE BIG COUNTRY. He liked to see human cockfights. Peckinpah thought heightened tension would fuel creativity, but there was reportedly too much of it on the set of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, resulting in endless squabbles and delays in the filming schedule.
Anyway, Peckinpah was applying what he’d absorbed from his cultural background to his professional life. He grew up in a world where a man had to prove himself through toughness, and he went out of his way to test the toughness of those around him. He was a rebel-authoritarian. He like to make trouble but also to control the trouble. He sought to coordinate his own Cultural Revolutions on the set. Even so, his authoritarian side drew the line between who were deserving of respect and who were to be pushed around and prodded(so they could prove themselves). Established stars like Ernest Borgnine had nothing but praise for Peckinpah since they were treated with respect. Just as Chisum treats Garrett and Poe differently, Peckinpah treated people on the movie set differently. Chisum will have Garrett for supper in his house if Garrett will accept the offer, but Poe must go eat in the bunkhouse with other ranch hands. Chisum has a degree of respect for Garrett but none for Poe, whom he gauges instantly to be a dimwit toady. And consider the scene in THE WILD BUNCH when the Mexican general Mapache and his German officers invite Pike and Dutch to sit at their table to discuss matters while the Gorch brothers and Old Man Sykes are made to sit apart ‘like some kitchen help’, which makes Lyle Gorch(Warren Oates)simmer with rage. Peckinpah understood what humiliation was all about. He had to suffer its arrows when he grew up in the West, when he served in the military, and when he climbed up the ladder in the film industry. But unlike some people who saw it as an evil and waged a cultural/moral campaign against it, Peckinpah accepted it as a part of life, as a way of becoming and measuring a man. By making it as a director, Peckinpah had paid his dues and proven his worth, and so he expected others to make their way the same way. In the Peckinpah universe, skill and intelligence aren’t enough. David(Dustin Hoffman) is a smart guy in STRAW DOGS, but the town thugs, even as they call him ‘sir’― according to the class logic of British society ― , can tell that he’s a chickenshit boy. They know that his privilege is based on status and position ― a successful American academic ― than on his worth as a man. It’s a Jewish nightmare, as the town thugs sense that the Jew who’s married to the hottest woman in town is really a pushover and that his mathematical theories cannot save his butt against them. And when the police captain of the town is gunned down, David knows he’s in some bad shit. Even his blonde shikse wife turns on him, and he’s all alone. Brains alone cannot save him, and so he realizes that brains + muscle + will = the edge. So, he uses his brains to plot a brilliant defensive strategy as the thugs surround his house for a pogrom and maybe for an encore rape of the wife ― which she might enjoy, since she lost all respect for her wimpy husband. Though saving a poor man from the mob serves as his moral justification, David Sumner’s Will to Fight is really fired by a sudden emergence of his latent manly pride and territoriality. Likewise, even though liberal Jews in the 50s and early 60s claimed to be helping poor Negroes from hateful white mobs in the Deep South, their moral rationale was fueled by a tribal will to secure Jewish power in America. Consider the irony of American Jews morally championing ‘oppressed’ blacks in America while, at the same time, gleefully and tribally cheering on Zionists in Israel to beat up on the Arabs. David becomes like a one-man IDF(Israeli Defense Force), and uses brains + muscle + will to kick some serious butt in one of the most astounding scenes of violence ever filmed. The philosophy behind STRAW DOGS was consistent with Peckinpah’s view of human nature in his Westerns, but it was tagged as ‘fascist’ by some film critics because Peckinpah applied it to a realistic contemporary setting. Watching violent people carrying out violent acts in a Western or crime thriller is to be expected, but watching ‘regular’ people pushed into a corner where their only chance of survival is to ‘act like a man’ unnerved a lot of people, especially liberals. And so, Pauline Kael, though a huge fan of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and THE WILD BUNCH, damned STRAW DOGS as ‘the first fascist work of art’. Without the shroud of mythology, it hit too close to home.
Anyway, what many people would consider as ‘abuse’ today was considered a part of growing up by people of Peckinpah’s generation, and this was shared by some women too, which could be why Pauline Kael, despite her reservations about STRAW DOGS, remained his friend. They both understood each other as ‘tough guy’ and ‘tough gal’. They took no prisoners and said it like it was. And the famous American columnists Mike Royko and Jimmy Breslin were the same way. Liberal or conservative, they thought a guy was supposed to be a guy: tough, hard-drinking, thick-skinned, and willing to bruise and be bruised. If one was pushed, one pushed back and didn’t go crying to authority. And if you were a woman, you either proved yourself the equal of tough guys by being a tough gal ― like Barbara Stanwyck in many of her roles ― , or you shut up and went to the kitchen. It was bitchin’ or the kitchen.
As with most things, there was a good side and a bad side to this. They were free thinkers and free spirits; they made their way through their rough terrain; they paid their dues. They got cut, bruised, and stitched along the way ― and didn’t complain ― through the hard knock school of life, and so when they got what they wanted, they wore it like a badge. It’s like how some soldiers and athletes like to show off their scars, as if to say, “I’ve been there, done that, took the pain and never whined....” There was an element of rugged individualism in their success but also an element of suppressed individuality. In the world of fantasy, individualism means anything one wishes it to be. So, if you’re a fan of punk, heavy metal, or rap, you can pretend to be satanic or badass. But in the real world, individualism has always meant fitting into society while trying to maintain one’s personal pride and conscience. It never meant doing or saying whatever one feels like and calling it ‘free expression’. It was like man’s relation with nature. We think of Mountain Men as wild and free, but they actually had to ‘conform’ to nature in order to survive. Nature, being plenty harsh and dangerous, didn’t offer Mountain Men the freedom to do as they please. Mountain Men had to learn the necessary skills, act in a certain way, and be in tune with nature to eke out a living from it. If a Mountain Man acted like a punk rebel and mooned a grizzly bear, his ass would have been shredded into ribbons. If a Mountain Man spent his entire summer having fun, he wouldn’t have stored any food for the winter. So, traditional individualism meant having limited freedom within a certain tough context but using the bulk of that freedom to work and survive. And in those days, everyone had to work at something. There was no welfare. Unless you were born to some privileged family and handed everything, you had to struggle against Indians, the land, animals, climate, and etc. The government didn’t provide every lazy American with free water, free heating, free clothing, free food, and etc. And even among the privileged, the proper thing was for all men to do something if they were to maintain their social dignity. It would have been thought shameful for a full-grown man to just sit around a swimming pool all day just because his family is rich. Today, a lot of kids go to college just to party and have fun and graduate with inflated grades. Thus, individualism in the current context has become decadent and corrupt, more fantastic. It’s not about the individual need to work and prove one’s worth but the individual ‘right’ to act like a lazy fool and then demand that government provide everything as a ‘right’.
Even privileged white girls attending private elite colleges ― like Sandra Fluke ― demand that it’s their ‘right’ to be provided with free birth control pills. But then, what do you expect from a society where increasing number of dummies demand the ‘right’ of gays to marry? Jews love to corrupt us in order to control us. A corrupted people are fixated on trivialities, and people with trivial minds are easier to manipulate through trashy culture and shallow ideologies. A people who can’t tell the difference between real marriage and ‘gay marriage’ will not know the difference between a real American citizen and an illegal alien who now goes by the title ‘undocumented immigrant’. Thus, Jews come to own and control all. A people who’ve been infantilized and made to whine about silly things like ‘free contraceptives as a right’ wouldn’t know a real ‘right’ when they see one nor understand the important relationship between freedom and responsibility. One may wonder why Jews wish to corrupt society when a corrupt society will eventually lead to decay and collapse, in which case, the Jewish elites will be brought down too. Jews are well aware of the dangers of social corruption, but they think in terms of priorities. For the time being, as long as there are gentile majorities in US and EU, Jews seek to push ANY program and policy that will undermine the cohesion, morale, unity, and pride of white people. But once white people are no longer the majority in US and EU, Jews will find reasons to close borders and shift social policies. Jews see white people as a cancer, and thus destructive social policies devised by Jews are seen as necessary chemotherapy to reduce the size of white tumor. But once white tumor has been reduced to a size that can no longer threaten Jewish power, Jews may well change their tune and policy. Jews have learned from history. British Imperialists used to favor Hindus against Muslims after they took control of the subcontinent from the Moghuls. But when Hindu nationalism later demanded independence, Brits sided with Muslims. Similarly, Jews are anti-white today because the majority populations of North America and EU are still white. But when white numbers and power dwindle and if EU becomes largely Muslm and if US becomes largely black and Hispanic, Jews will side with whites to play ‘balance of powers’ or ‘divide and rule the goyim’. What Jews are doing with whites is what whites once did with American Indians. Anglo-Americans forged ever shifting alliances with various tribes of Indians to further white interests. Anglo-Americans found it all very amusing and justifiable since they considered themselves smarter and worthier than the dumb Indians. Similarly, Jews feel justified in what they’re doing because they look down on the dimwit goyim. Even smart whites are no match for Jews when it comes to wit, intellect, and mental energy.
Anyway, even up to Peckinpah, Breslin, Royko, Hentoff, Mailer, and Kael’s generation, there was an understanding that individualism meant hard work and proving oneself. One had to pay one’s dues. One had to prove one’s worth in the movie industry or to the magazine editor, newspaper publisher, and etc. One didn’t feel entitled as a ‘special voice’ to be heard or financed. (To be sure, the conservative moralists of the day did have lots of influence that was unearned by individual merit or ability. Perhaps, the most notable ― as well as notorious ― among these was the influence of the Catholic Church. By raising public outcry ― or threat thereof ― , the moralists of the Religious Right had accumulated ‘unwarranted’ ― unwarranted in the sense of not having been won by merit or talent ― power to silence certain voices and suppress artistic expressions. This explains why so many men and women who’d risen through individual merit resented the power of the Moral Right, which had gained cultural clout through a kind of affirmative action of moral correctness. The Moral elders/leaders could be utterly mediocre or untalented but serve as cultural arbiters of what could be said in newspapers, heard on the radio, and shown on the movie screen. Thus, liberals of old were for individual meritocracy based on talent while conservatives were allied with communal mediocrity based on morality. So, anyone who cared about individual expression, freedom, and talent, regardless of his or her personal politics, often found himself or herself at odds with the Moral Right whether in the form of the Catholic Church or Protestant Church. This explains the animus of so many thinkers and writers against the Catholic Church; it also accounts for the mockery of religious people in Peckinpah’s films. Also, it was never difficult to expose the hypocrisy of the Moral Right as represented by the Catholic Church and Evangelicals when the former was rich/powerful and allied with dictators like Franco and the caudillos of Latin America. And the white Southern Baptist Church had roots in Segregation-ism and even the defense of slavery. So, for much of the 20th century, most free-thinking individualists saw the Moral Right as their main cultural enemy, and this hostility exists to this day between secular liberals and religious conservatives, indeed so much so that liberals have fallen for the fallacy that equates immorality with morality. The liberal moral logic goes: since the Moral Right is made up hypocritical bigots invoking morality to defend white male privilege, EVERYTHING they stand for must be bad and EVERYTHING they oppose must be good. Thus, since the Moral Right is opposed to ‘gay marriage’, ‘gay marriage’ must be good. But before liberalism got stupid, there was a valid reason for free-thinking liberals to resent the power of the Moral Right unearned by individual merit. A writer, artist, journalist, or intellectual had to stake his or her claim by his or her unique ability whereas some leader of a Moral Organization only needed to self-righteously pontificate about morality in order to be heard, feted, and appeased. Kael and Peckinpah developed an almost knee-jerk hostility against most forms of moralism. In the conflict of individual merit vs moral mediocrity, men and women of talent obviously prized the former as their meal-ticket and license for free expression and resented the latter as cultural commissars trying to silence them. But, it was not a simple case of liberal freedom vs conservative moralism as the Left had its own correct view of morality. Cultural life in communist nations was run by their own version of Moral Mediocrities. Socialist Realism was the official cultural ideology of Stalinism, and it favored mediocre artists adhering to correct ideology/style over unique artists of individual merit. Given the ideological/moral censoriousness of communism, why were so many liberals not as hostile to the Far Left? One reason was that in the West at least, cultural conservatives generally had greater sway among the masses than the communists did. Also, communism had the cachet of being revolutionary while conservatism was associated with dreary reaction. Communists, whatever their moral failings, were perceived to be giving the ‘oppressed’ classes a chance at power, whereas conservatives were seen as promoting mass ignorance and obedience to maintain the hierarchical status quo. So, even if conservatism was less violent and murderous than communism, the latter had the advantage of the vision/thrill thing. If the West had fallen under communism, liberals might have seen things differently but the West fell under Nazism/Fascism in the 30s/40s, and so most Western liberals came to equate the Right, whether National Socialism or the Catholic Church, with repression and tyranny. And many Western European liberals never forgot that the Soviets defeated Nazism. And given that Jews were terrorized most by the Far Right, Jewish power vilified the Right far more than the Left. Though most liberals were not pro-communist ― and many were anti-communist ― , their animus against the Far Left was never anything like their hatred of the Far Right or even the Moral Right. To most liberals, anything that had to do with Fascism/Nazism was the purest evil whereas the Far Left was seen as misguided than evil. Fascists were bad people hellbent on doing bad whereas communists were good people heavenbent on doing good but ending up doing bad out of zealotry and fanaticism. As for the Moral Right, its power was simply too close to home for many Western liberals. Communists may have been killing people behind the Iron Curtain, but it was the Moral Right that could silence liberal voices and expressions in the 1940s and 1950s. It was the Moral Right that Hollywood had to appease in terms of what could and could not be shown in movies. Anyway, given the considerable ‘unwarranted’ power held by the mediocrities of the Moral Right, many free-thinking and expressive people turned to liberalism that seemed to champion individual merit and vitality over dreary communal consensus that too often was manipulated by unimaginative and even corrupt moralistic arbiters of the Church or some other organization of holier-than-thou folks spouting off on ‘family values’. There was much of real worth, moral and cultural, among American conservatives but the face of conservative morality was too often the likes of Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, and Ralph Reed ― people using moral righteousness as a shield for the status quo of ‘white privilege’. As the culture changed, especially with the rise of youth culture, Rock music, and New Cinema ― International and American ― , the ‘unwarranted’ and ‘unearned’ moral power held by the Moral Right slipped away and became irrelevant. The Moral Right had the power to defacto ban blasphemy on the movie screen and on the airwaves in the 40s and 50s, but Americans were, by and large, moving toward a hipper and more libertine cultural outlook. The rise of Rock n Roll played a huge role in this, oddly enough because Elvis was culturally conservative and was promoted by cultural conservatives; it made him seem safer and more acceptable to Middle America and even Southern White America. Elvis may have sung ‘black music’, but he was no fan of ‘niggers’ ― which is what he called them ― , and he was a ‘good Southern boy who loved his mama’. And Ed Sullivan ― who looked like Richard Nixon ― among others ‘tamed’ Elvis and other Rockers and rendered them acceptable as family entertainment. So, the griping of the Moral Right became irrelevant. The final nail in the coffin of the Moral Right came, in effect, with the release of Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE, one of the most wickedly perverse and irreverent films ever made. The sensibility it purveyed ― along with Dylan in Rock music ― made it impossible to turn back the clock. And when THE GRADUATE gave us hanky-panky between a young man and an older woman in the suburbs and ended with the Jewishy character using a crucifix to battle a clan of blonde folks and running off with the girl, the cultural influence of the Moral Right seemed like ancient history. And then came the legalization of porn under the rubric of ‘free expression’. So, one could say liberal meritocracy, individuality, brilliance, and freedom won over conservative moralism. But, it wasn’t that simple. As they say, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Porn, though the epitome of everything that the Moral Right had opposed, had nothing to do with individuality and meritocracy. It pandered to the lowest-common-denominator and appealed to the gross-beast-animal by using dumb bimbos as sex meat and by addicting loser-men to obscenity. One creative advantage that moral censoriousness had unwittingly forced on liberals was the necessity of conveying certain ideas/expressions in subtle ways to bypass the censors. Thus, though Hollywood movies prior to the late 60s hardly showed any nudity, they could be more erotic than later movies where tits and asses were hanging loose all over. VERTIGO and MARNIE are bigger turn-ons than the nude flicks of the 70s. This goes for violence too. Indeed, Spielberg has been notable for working in the classic tradition of packing excitement with minimum gore, the exceptions being SCHINDLER’S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. JAWS and JURASSIC PARK are not particularly big on graphic violence, but they are amongst the scariest movies ever made because of Spielberg’s brilliant mastery of movement, suspense, rhythm, editing. But for every filmmaker who employed the new freedom to convey sexuality/violence more meaningfully, there were many more who indulged in the new freedom as a shortcut to notoriety and/or popularity. Like Russians suddenly liberated from communism over-indulged in ‘wild and crazy’ freedom,
the new freedoms had an intoxicating effect on American culture to the point where cinema eventually became a roller coaster ride and pop music became audio-porn-for-ass-shaking-orgasms. But another challenge to individual meritocracy came from the New Moralism within Leftism and Liberalism itself. The Left had always been heavily moralistic in its commitment to ‘social justice’ and to revolutionary war against the ‘exploitive’ capitalist class and the decadent bourgeoisie. And there was a heavy dose of do-goody sanctimoniousness in Liberal Reformism from its earliest days. There is something good to be said for well-meaning progressives, and such people have long existed in both the Republican party and the Democratic party. But, Moral Progressivism could be just as overweening, holier-than-thou, simple-minded, brain-dead, and hypocritical as the Moralism on the Right. Of course, given that liberals were more involved in arts and letters, many more books and movies were bound to preach Moral Progressivism than Moral Conservatism. Indeed, then as now, conservatives don’t make culture but simply hope and pray that liberals won’t make culture that is overly anti-conservative. That is the essence of conservative role in American cultural life: Hoping that liberals will be nicer to them. For all the White Rightist yammering about whites having higher intelligence, white conservatives seem about as capable of creating new culture as Mexicans are. And even though most Morally Progressive movies and books weren’t great works of art, liberals got pretty competent at it ― and besides, most of the audience was looking for feel-good entertainment than genuine art. In other words, most people prefer stuff like THE GREEN MILE and FORREST GUMP to PRINCE OF THE CITY. Even so, liberals not only dominated the feel-good entertainment but also the appreciation of genuine art. In France, almost all the leading filmmakers since the 50s were either liberal or leftist. And almost all film-makers, film critics, and film culture organizers have been liberals or leftists. Thus, liberals came to dominate not only entertainment but genuine art. It’s no wonder that gays have more power than the entire American conservative apparatus whose cultural capital is Nashville, which too, by the way, is going the way of ‘gay marriage’ since conservatives have no new ideas or new energy in defense of old ideas. Anyway, frictions and conflicts existed in the liberal camp. Moral Liberals, Ideological Liberals, Elitist Liberals, and Individual Liberals didn’t see eye to eye, and some of them would later join the Right as neo-cons. MORAL liberals saw arts & culture as tools for conveying social virtue. TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD best exemplified such outlook with roots in Protestant social reform. It tended to be good-willed, naive, and earnest. Its most famous counterpart in the 19th century was UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. Stanley Kramer made several movies in this mode, though, being a Jew, he might have been cleverly manipulating white liberal naivete than actually believing the simple-minded tripe he churned out every other year. IDEOLOGICAL liberals were allied with Moral Liberals but tended to be more intellectual and theoretical. Though not necessarily radical, Ideological Liberals went beyond earnest good will and held onto the conviction/conceit that they really understood the ‘science’ of history and power. Though not communist, many took their cues from Marxist theory. And in terms of power, they eventually came to the heed the advice of Saul Alinsky who taught them the ‘science’ of deception and manipulation. It is their intellectual arrogance that allows Ideological Liberals to lie with a straight face. They see the masses as dumb children who must be lied to for their own good. If Moral Liberals earnestly believe in their own horseshit and embrace stuff like TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD and THE GREEN MILE as genuine representation of racial reality, Ideological Liberals see the horseshit as necessary instruments in their path to power. Cass the Ass Sunstein is an ideological liberal. He’s too smart to actually take something like THELMA AND LOUISE or SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION seriously, but he values them as cultural nudges that push the American public in the ‘correct’ direction. In contrast, the ELITIST liberals favored rationality, sobriety, and high standards as the keystones of progress. Dwight MacDonald was a good example of such liberal. So was Clement Greenberg and Hilton Kramer, who later gravitated to the Right upon witnessing the decline of standards and seriousness in high culture and social policy. Elitist liberalism favored the Best and the Brightest and championed the Jeffersonian notion of the natural aristocracy. They upheld avant garde-ism in the arts as leading the way and believed that the best of culture could never be appreciated by the masses. Elitist liberals respected artists like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Picasso precisely because their works were not for everyone. Elitist liberals were anti-conservative in the sense that they associated conservatism with ignorant populism, superstitious reaction, and middle-brow mediocrity. If European aristocratic and bourgeoisie conservatism at least had an appreciation for arts and culture, American conservatism seemed drab and dreary in its mass conformity and consumerism. Elitist liberals eventually lost their once esteemed place in American arts & letters with the rise of the New Sensibility in the Sixties as defined by Pauline Kael’s rowdy populism, Andrew Sarris’s cultism, and Sontag’s campism. Finally, there was INDIVIDUALIST Liberals who didn’t care much for ideology, dogma, do-goodery, or snobbery. Individualist Liberals’ main emphasis was personality and freedom. Their own personal feelings, idiosyncracies, eccentricities, and experiences mattered most, and they resented being placed inside a box by any side ― not only by the Right but by the Left. Bob Dylan was an Individualist Liberal who finally broke with the Folk Movement dominated by Moral Liberalism and Ideological Liberalism. He agreed with much of liberal politics but also regarded many liberals and leftists as simple-minded drones trying to control him and mold him in their own image. Kael, though hostile to conservatism, couldn’t resist poking fun at the dogmatism and do-goodery of liberals. She also mocked Elitist Liberals for their snobbery and narcissism. She found the spectacle of American ‘intellectuals’ tripping all over themselves to praise European art films hilarious. Norman Mailer, though something of an Ideological Liberal, had a powerful Individualist Liberal streak, a quality shared by Nat Hentoff. And writing from Chicago, there was Mike Royko, famous for his personality and autobiographical touch as for his satire. In time, Individualist Liberals were bound to lose to Ideological Liberals for the simple reason that Organized Power eventually wins over Individualist Power. Individualist Liberals may have played a crucial role in bringing about a new culture/sensibility, but the controllers of the new cultural order amassed all the institutional power, and thus Ideological Liberalism morphed into INSTITUTIONAL Liberalism. If Individualist Liberals put a premium on freedom, Ideological/Institutional Liberals sought to uniformly enforce correctness on all people. It’s like the history of religions. All religions may have been founded by Individualist Visionaries, but they are eventually owned and controlled by Organized Power that grows up around it. Thus, Christianity was the invention of the heretic Jesus, but the Organized Power of Christianity later established Christianity as the only correct religion and persecuted all heretics. Though Marxism was the invention of a free-thinking radical intellectual, communism came to be owned and controlled by ruthless organizers such as Lenin and especially Stalin. It was only a matter of time before Individualist Liberals would butt heads with Ideological/Institutional Liberals who approved of freedom ONLY WHEN it coincided with their agenda. So, Kael got in trouble with the gay lobby, Mailer got in trouble with feminists, and Royko got in trouble with the multi-cultural lobby when he wrote a not-too-kind column about Mexicans. Today, Ideological/Institutional Liberalism seeks to suppress free speech by legislation and uses its immense media power to disgrace, persecute, and blacklist anyone accused of ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘antisemitism’, and what not. Incidentally, ‘misogyny’ used to be a great sin, but with the rise of Slut Culture and Rap Music that calls women ‘Hos’, the new feminism is either on the side of the pornification of women or too timid to voice opposition to the new ‘misogyny’ as defined by Rap culture. When much of raunchy Rock music was white-dominated and when most of Porn was white males humping white females, feminists often screamed ‘misogyny’. But since black Rap is the dominant form of pop music and since interracism is the prevailing policy in porn, feminists see the new ‘misogyny’ as furthering the ‘progressive’ goal of race-mixing and the destruction of the white race/power. Similarly, if most of sports were white-male-dominated, feminists could well be bitching about the macho-male-thuggery of sports, but since most popular sports are dominated by blacks, feminists remain silent about all the thuggery so rampant among athletes, especially black ones. Anyway, if the Moral Right ― such as the Catholic Church ― once wielded the ‘unwarranted’ and ‘unearned’ power to put a lid on individual liberty and free cultural expression, that power now rests with the Ideological Left. Though most of the Best and the Brightest are liberals and leftists in America, most of the people who run ‘progressive’ institutions are simple-minded ideologues or
power-mad opportunists whose power has been unearned by individual merit ― this is especially true if the people involved happen to be black. They are mediocrities who absorbed all the ‘correct’ social science truisms in college taught by professors, most of whom also happen to be second-rate ideologues of correctitude. Most ‘intellectuals’, ‘scholars’, and ‘experts’ in the humanities and social institutions have been promoted for having ‘correct’ views than on the basis of individual merit. It’s the Malcolm-Gladwellization and Rachel-Maddow-ization of American academia and media.
The very people who used to resent the ‘unwarranted’ power of the Moral Right are now gaining ever more power and prize for themselves in the most ‘unwarranted’ ways, but most Americans are blind to this fact because they’ve no idea just how much American intellectual life has been dogmatized and ‘spiritualized’. Though liberals are really peddling their own version of secular faith/religion, their cachet of being ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ has hoodwinked the majority of Americans. Thus, if you don’t agree with the Liberal agenda, you must be suffering from a phobia, paranoia, madness, or some ‘odious’ and ‘noxious’ evil. Though the liberal notion of “race is just a social construct” is a matter of faith, many mistake it for science since it comes out of ‘social science’ departments. Now, surely the truly smart liberals know that political correctness is a pack of lies, so why do they tolerate the ‘unwarranted’ power of Moral Progressivism and Ideological Liberalism? Because it means more power to their side.
Similarly, intelligent conservatives have long known that the Christian Right is full of shit, but they looked the other way since electoral support of Christian Right has been crucial to GOP victories. On the other hand, the pitbull you breed to garner greater power on your side can come to bite you. Liberal professors have been attacked by lunatics of PC. Consider the hot water Larry Summers got into for talking about IQ differences between the sexes. And the GOP, which pandered to the Christian Right to win some votes, became culturally held hostage to the pigheaded religiosity of the Evangelicals. If Evangelicalism had merely been one of the components of the Big Tent coalition under Reagan, it became the dominant cultural face of the GOP under Bush II, making the GOP brand unappealing to the great majority of educated and intelligent people. Leftist Ideology of Correctness has become the new Organized Religion of soul-stultified and brain-petrified certitudes. At one time, it took a liberal or leftist of real brilliance, insight, and originality to rise up with new ideas. But once liberalism came to dominate the new order, its ranks were filled with people who wouldn’t know a free thought if one stared them in the face. If liberals in the past rose by being at odds with the elite status quo, today’s liberals rise by toeing the elitist line enforced by the liberal Jewish elite. Some Individualist Liberals sounded the alarm on Political Correctness birthed by the New Liberalism, but the rise of New Liberalism as a new form of organized religion was hard to resist; not only was it becoming too powerful but it promised a lot of power to the people on its side. If the masses could be won over and mind-and-soul-controlled through simple slogans, pageantry, dogma, chants, and fervor, just imagine the power liberals could have through similar means. Religions/faiths last much longer than politics/ideology; so, imagine if the ‘rational’ ideology of Liberalism could be converted to the spiritualist organized church of liberalism with its saints, heroes, villains, gods, and rules of blasphemy. And it’s because of the religious aura around the MLK cult that even conservatives fall all over themselves to stand in line to kiss the memory of Michael King, aka Martin L. King’s ass.) One may have desired a certain position or funding, but he or she had to prove himself or herself at every turn. Individualism didn’t mean the world should accommodate itself to the individual but that the individual should have the freedom, drive, and spirit to prove his individual worth to the world. Take George Bailey in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. He says he wants to build things. When he says he wants to ‘lick the world’, he means he wants to prove his worth to the world. But individualism since the 60s has come to mean, “I want the world to lick MY ass.” In our age of ‘self-esteem’, every moron thinks he or she is entitled to a college education, a job, this ‘right’ and that ‘right’ among endless numbers of ‘rights’ that pop up like mushrooms after a rain. This is all very strange since the cultural change in the 60s was justified in the name of greater freedom and individuality. Then, why did it eventually lead to greater conformism and dependency? In the 50s, there was a lot of things that couldn’t be said on the radio, a lot of things that couldn’t be shown on TV, lots of censorship in cinema. So, the 60s opened up a lot of possibilities, and the new freedom was seen as a great boon for individual freedom and expression. And people like Peckinpah and Kael were great beneficiaries of this. A film like THE WILD BUNCH or PAT GARRET & BILLY THE KID couldn’t have been made in the 50s. And Kael rose to prominence in the 60s thanks to profound cultural changes. She became a household name with her review of BONNIE AND CLYDE that heralded an irreversible cultural shift. In the cultural battles of 60s, one side was gaining the upperhand. Ed Sullivan, the host of a top entertainment show, seemed ever more out-of-touch when he demanded that the Rolling Stones and the Doors change their lyrics and tone down their acts. It seemed as if the spirit of Kesey, Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce would prevail and win the day, and indeed it won for awhile. Suddenly, there was more freedom than ever before. And in some ways, those changes intensified over the years. Some of the stuff on TV and pop music today make the 60s culture look downright puritanical. People in the 60s watched THE JETSONS. Today, we have FAMILY GUY. Most music videos are essentially mainstream-ization of porn. In terms of sexuality, violence, filth, and obscenity, America is ‘freer’ than ever. It’s like Howard Stern is our cultural commissar. But, one crucial difference is the ‘filth’ of yesteryear had an element of violation and subversion whereas the filth of today is Filth, institutionalized, entrenched, and controlled by the powers-that-be. Even ‘shock’ is prefabricated and enforced upon us, as when a recent TIME magazine cover presented a Liberal-Aryan-Super-Babe-Woman-in-Black-Breastfeeding-Her-Child ― classic case of ‘liberal fascism’. No one is shocked, but MSM tells us it’s “shocking” and so it must be. ‘Shocking’ is just a brand name. Thus, the powers-that-be create their own reality and have appropriated the art of ‘subversion’ ― not as an anti-establishment weapon but as a pro-establishment tool. Since the institutions are controlled and owned by narcissistic, liberal, urban professionals who’ve defined themselves as ‘radical’, ‘subversive’, and ‘progressive’, the so-called ‘shocking’ cover of TIME magazine merely assuages the ego of the urban elite. The cover is saying, “we creative and privileged urban people not only have the money, the power, and the influence, BUT the cutting edge too.” Well, if the elites now own ‘subversion’ and the ‘shock’ effect, how is anti-elitist rebellion even possible for the rest of us. We don’t even get to decide what is ‘shocking’ anymore. TIME and other MSM publications do it for us. In the 60s, Bob Dylan butted heads with a ‘square’ TIME interviewer, but today, the narcissistic hipsters in the media think they are all subversives and radicals. And yet, despite more sexuality and more violence, there’s been increasing conformism in thought, expression, and emotions, aka Oprahtics.
The main battle-line on the issue of free expression has been between anti-correct liberals and pro-correct liberals. Though conservatives bitch and whine about political correctness, they’ve rarely been on the side of free speech and expression in this country. While conservatives oppose liberal and leftist censorship, many of them have supported censorship of anti-conservative speech in the past. Whenever the Catholic Church opposed freedom of speech in the 1940s and 1950s, conservatives often sided with the censors. Cultural conservatives were also responsible for the Scopes-Monkey Trial. Though William Jennings Byran was a populist Democrat, he was a cultural conservative. Anyway, why did anti-correct liberals lose to pro-correct liberals? One reason is some seemingly anti-correct liberals were actually pro-correct liberals working as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Many Jews who joined the A.C.L.U. and fought for total freedom of speech did so only to protect leftist speech(especially those of Jews). But once the Leftist Jews gained power over the academia and media, A.C.L.U. has been on the side of political correctness to clamp down on ‘hate speech’.
Even so, there were many sincere anti-correct liberals, so why did they lose? One reason was such people tended to be mavericks not only in what they said but in how they lived. They were wild, unpredictable, getting into trouble, and more likely to burn out. Just as wild gays were more likely to die from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, wild liberals were more likely to flame out under the influence of drugs, sex, and violence. Just as the bureaucratic and studious Stalin eventually prevailed over the wilier, more flamboyant, and more reckless Trotkyites, the studious correct liberals prevailed over the wild incorrect liberals. Studious liberals and leftists were less imaginative, more dogged, less humorous, more moralistic, more puritanical in their ideological faith, more into the minutiae of power. So, if guys like Ken Kesey were partying and using drugs, the studious members of the Counterculture did their homework, passed the tests, got the jobs, and made the social climb. Take the movie PAPER CHASE. Though the students have long hair and look like the hipsters of their generation ― they’d fit right in at Woodstock ― , they are utterly serious when it comes to homework and passing the exams. They know the difference between style/fashion and substance/future. They know they gotta do real work and pass real exams to gain a foothold in the higher world. Their industriousness and commitment to success by hard work were laudable among studious leftists and liberals, but in their drone-like drive for power, they came to betray the very ideals that defined their ideology. When push came to shove, if they had to choose between power and freedom, it was power. And so they began a process of controlling and reeling in freedom whereby some kinds of free expression ― especially mindless sex & violence and anti-white-straight-male diatribes ― were given green light while other kinds of freedoms came to be suppressed by ostracization, blacklisting, and even threat of criminal prosecution(whereby if you use a ‘racial slur’ against someone, you can be charged with a ‘hate crime’). Thus, not all freedoms of expressions are equal. A rapper can scream and holler about beating up white guys and raping white women, but he gets million dollar contracts from Jews who control the music industry. But forget about any musical contract if you’re a rocker spouting ‘anti-black racist hate’. Thus, Al Sharpton is okay but Don Imus is not. Thus, it’s okay for Jews to criticize, attack, and condemn all sorts of goyim, but it’s not okay for goyim to attack Jews in the similar way. A Jew can scream “Terrorist Muslims! Terrorist Muslims! Terrorist Muslims! Damn Christians! Damn Christians! Damn Christians!”, but a goy cannot say “Asshole Jews!” Gays can spew their filth against decent Americans, but decent Americans cannot call ‘gay sex’ what it is: fecal penetration. And who controls the academia and media and the rules of the debate? The traffic cops of information in the modern West are the hideous Jews. And if the likes of Elena Kagan ― appointed by Obama who himself was groomed by Jews ― have their own way, internet freedom will go out the window and all criticism of Jewish power will be criticized as a ‘hate crime’ as is already the case in Europe and Canada. Jewish factor is very important in both the rise of freedom and death of freedom in America. When Jews were suspected of communist sympathies in the 1950s and hadn’t yet attained elite power in the 1960s, no group did as much as the Jews to fight for greater freedom of speech and expression. Since Jews couldn’t say, “just give us Jews more freedom”, Jews(in the A.C.L.U. for example)had to fight for freedom for all, even for the KKK and neo-Nazis, and indeed during this period, no people were more responsible for making America a freer place than the Jews were. But once Jews gained elite power, they got addicted to power and couldn’t resist using their power to control freedoms to their own advantage. In the past, Jews needed to push greater freedom of speech for all in order for Jew to have total freedom of speech. But once Jews got their total freedom and used that freedom to gain elite power, what was the point of total freedom of speech for all when some people might use that freedom to take on Jewish elite power? And so, Jews today, under the guise of protecting poor minorities from ‘white supremacist’ hate, are pushing for ‘hate speech laws’, but this is really to protect the Jewish elite from being criticized and scrutinized. (In this light, we have to take Steven Pinker’s critique of the 60s with a grain of salt. If Jews today didn’t control elite power circles, Pinker today would most likely be supportive of 60s maverick-libertarianism. Pinker wants to rein in the ‘excesses’ because Jews now control all the ivory towers of America. When Jews couldn’t steer the boat, they rocked the boat. Now that Jews steer the boat, they wanna make sure others don’t rock the boat. Jews are now the Establishment, but Jews also wanna cling to their mantle of cutting-edge-ness, and so they push something like ‘gay marriage’. If 60s freedom/rebellion was about telling the institutions to keep their hands off of one’s individual liberties, current political correctness is about radicalizing institutions and using them to force all Americans to accept certain ‘values’. If gays in the 60s protested to be left alone to be gay, gays ― in alliance with Jews ― today wanna control government, media, and social institutions in order to force us to agree with them. Thus, Jews and gays have the cake and eat it too. They control the institutions of the Establishment but by having radicalized them, they also maintain the aura of being ‘subversive’ and rebellious. To be sure, there was no single kind of 60s liberalism and leftism. If some called for more individual freedom ― in sexuality, culture, lifestyle, and drug use ―, other liberals called for bigger government, more statism, and intrusiveness in the name of ‘inclusiveness’. The differences is that if the two sides of liberalism were at odds with one another in the 60s, they’ve been forged into a new kind of ‘progressivism’ where the maverick, the deviant, and the defiant no longer wanna be left alone to do as they please but wanna use the levers of institutional power to force all of us to accept their ‘lifestyles’ and ‘values’ as being of equal value of traditional, normal, and rational ways of life. And of course, lots of young people are falling for this. Now, one may ask why young people who demand more freedom also want more statism? Isn’t freedom about individual choice? If the government has more power of us, won’t we have less freedom? But liberals promise all sorts of ‘free stuff’ to young people as entitlements and ‘rights’, and so young people can’t resist ‘free stuff’. Young people think getting ‘free stuff’ means they’ll have more freedom. They fail to understand that getting more free stuff from government means having less freedom as individuals. If an individual is free to smoke and suffer the consequences of his smoking, then he lived and died on his own terms. But if he accepts ‘free healthcare’, then the government has the right to tell him how to live his life since government has to pay for the consequences of his choices and actions, such as smoking. If the government pays for your higher education, the government can dictate to colleges what they must teach. The advice of the government may be sound and constructive, but if the government has the power to tell you what to eat and what to smoke, you lose your freedom. But, the bigger problem is the government may, in the end, not even be able to control people’s lives, in which case the government has to provide everything but everyone acts like a slob anyway. Just look what happened to welfare. It was supposed to help people out of poverty, but it just gave many people an opportunity to choose a life of perpetual dependence and decadence. UK has offered ‘free’ healthcare since end of WWII, and British government has more power over its citizens than American government has over its own citizens. But it’s still impossible for the British government to supervise everyone and what they eat, and so there’s an epidemic of obesity, rotten teeth, and other health problems. If even a totalitarian government like the one in the USSR couldn’t prevent its citizens from drinking too much vodka and eating too much fat, what hope is there of government running a sound social system in the modern decadent West? Thus, the government, once it guarantees more and more ‘free’ stuff to people, may end up footing the bill for the stupid livelihoods of dumb lazy moronic people. Just look at the fall of Greece and Spain. Government, in doling out ‘free’ stuff, hoped to gain greater control of the populace, but too many people still acted like lazy leeches and stupid bums, and so, the government had to keep borrowing money to shower the bums with ‘free’ stuff’ until the whole system could no longer be sustained.
In the 1980s, the so-called Reagan decade, Jews put into place the mechanisms that would bring about the next great social transformation. There was a scaling back of the kind of wild freedoms that defined the 1960s and early 1970s, a time when the new freedoms had been useful to Jews as battering rams against the status quo. But once Jews weaseled themselves into the elite corridors of power, all that 60s anarchic energy was counterproductive to the Jewish effort to control the younger generation. Suppose young people acted toward the boomers as boomers had acted to their elders? Boomers would then come under the same strain and challenge as their parents’ generation had done. So, kids had to be ‘cleaned up’ and made easier to control, and much of this was done during the Reagan decade(and carried over into the Clinton decade). Liberal boomers used the cover of Reagan-era conservatism to ‘tame’ the younger generation through artificial servings of MTV, teenage sex comedies, fabricated rock music, and soulless TV shows. While much of the stuff was raunchy and debased, they were all prepackaged, prefabricated, market-tested, and plastic-wrapped.
The sexuality and violence in EASY RIDER was raw and challenging. Though Woodstock was grubby, it was about men and women getting ‘real’ with nature. But sexuality in the 80s was Mudonna and her plasticine-pussy-inflatable-sex-doll acts.
So, there are two ways to look at the 80s: as a time of conservative revival and retrenchment OR as a time of liberal boomer adjustment when they used the Reaganite lull to shift from ‘maverick’ anti-establishmentarianism to a neo-establishmentarianism. In the late 60s and early 70s, people like Bill Clinton were growing their hair long, smoking pot, and acting like hippie radicals ― at least in style. But by the 80s, they were running governments and seeking to gain power. They needed young people to be docile, and so Reaganism was actually helpful to the boomer power-grab. Since the 80s generation didn’t rebel but was into consumerist conformism ala MTV, they never learned to rebel against the boomers as the boomers had rebelled against the Greatest Generation.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID suffers from the sometimes expository dialogue. There’s no need for a film to explain itself. It’s better to show than to tell. Though much of the script works(and on occasion even rises to greatness), some of them sound like speeches. The problem is apparent in the very opening scene ― the framing device where a much older Garrett is set up for an assassination ― in which Garrett and Poe don’t so much argue as make arguments of thematic nature. Instead of allowing the theme to gradually reveal itself throughout the film, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID spells it out from the beginning. Visually, the opening framing device is impressive, but its dialogue is among the worst in Peckinpah films.
Garrett: “Thought I told you not to run them sheep on my land.”
Poe: “It’s my land, Garrett. It became mine when we signed that lease.”
Garrett: “... I’m breaking off that goddamn lease.”
Poe: “I don’t allow the law will agree with that.”
Garrett: “What law is that? Sante Fe ring law? Shit. Goddamn law is ruining this country.”
Poe: “Ain’t you still part of that law? I believe they elected you and paid you good wages for killing the Kid, huh?”
Garrett: “You rotten son of a bitch.”
The opening scene takes place in 1909, almost thirty years after the death of Billy the Kid. Poe has grey hair, and Garrett seems to be something of an old coot. The opening establishes the older Poe as a conniving cold-blooded killer, and throughout the film, the younger Poe doesn’t seem any better. Even so, something doesn’t make sense. In their exchange, Poe doesn’t come across as particularly unreasonable. If Garrett indeed signed a lease with Poe, and if the Law designates the territory as belonging to Poe, the fault seems to be more with Garrett than with Poe or the Law. Garrett says, “I’m breaking off that goddamn lease”, which means he’s not very trustworthy. And though Poe did set up an assassination, it is Garrett who pulls out his gun first ― though to be sure, he was provoked to violence, just like Garrett once provoked Holly to pull out the knife. And we’re not exactly sure how the ‘goddamn law is ruining this country’. Is the concept of legal contracts somehow wrong? While the white man did cheat the Red man out of many treaties and big barons surely used their muscle against the little guy ― as shown in MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER ― , we don’t get that sense with Garrett, who comes across as a well-established figure who just wants to renege on a contract. Also, even though the killing of Billy the Kid is mourned in the film as a passing of the era of the free outlaw, there seems to be plenty of outlawry in 1909. I mean if a bunch of guys can so easily ambush and assassinate a guy like Garrett, how is the new West any different from the Old West? One wonders if Peckinpah really thought things through, but maybe the problem was he thought things through too much. A romantic shouldn’t try to make ‘intellectual’ case of his vision of life. Peckinpah’s views of the Old West were essentially emotional and poetic(irrational), and on that level, Billy the Kid could be seen as a kind of ‘hero’, the last of the breed. Poetry or music doesn’t need justification, but PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID tries to ‘philosophically’ justify the life and times of Billy the Kid. In RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, we understand why the aging gunman wants to ‘enter (his) house justified’. He has a personal code committed to virtue. But, Billy is not about virtue but freedom, and while his freedom may have a certain romantic appeal, it cannot be rendered into a rational philosophy that can be morally justified ― and I’ve no idea what amoral justification would be. THE WILD BUNCH too is about the passing of an era, but it’s only one aspect of a larger event. Pike Bishop at one point says, “We have to think beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast.” Not only is the line crisper and more real, it sounds like a personal observation, not some self-consciously profound statement. There’s an exciting sense of desperados figuring out how to remain alive than of the wisdom of saddleback philosophers and saloon professors giving a lecture on freedom and friendship. (Incidentally, friendship and freedom may be enemies as well as partners. Billy is supposed to be free, but his emotional bond to Garrett prevents him from acting freely to be rid of Pat-as-enemy. An interesting film on how the bond of friendship can be a form of bondage is RIDE WITH THE DEVIL where a black guy fights alongside his white friend for the Confederacy. Because the black guy grew up as a slave with the white guy who freed him, the black guy feels owed to the white guy, which is a kind of emotional bondage. This is often the problem in politics and the game of power. People who are politically divided may be personally connected, and people who are personally divided may be politically connected. This is one reason why Jews want more token ‘clean cut’ blacks in the upper ranks of elite society. That way, more white elites will become bonded with and thus ‘bondaged’ to black ‘friends’, and that will undermine the possibility of their developing a white consciousness, just like the friendship with the white guy prevented the black guy in RIDE WITH THE DEVIL from going over to the other side and fighting for the Union. Without the leadership of white elites, white nationalism won’t go anywhere. As history has shown time and time again, all revolutions are led by elites, not by the masses. The elites don’t have to be established but they must be men of superior quality and ability, like Lenin and Castro. The brightest whites become part of the Establishment, but they not only refuse to lead white nationalism but do everything in their power to oppose and suppress it. Since Jews and white liberal elites control the media and since most whites get their view of reality from the media, white nationalism goes nowhere. But even if masses of whites were to come over to white nationalism, they wouldn’t know how to organize, manage, and/or lead a movement. They would need to be led by elites. Most people are sheep and wanna be told how to think, how to feel, what to do. They seek approbation. Because there’s no willing white elites to lead the movement ― and since the so-called leadership of white nationalism is third-rate and so utterly lacking in elite credentials ― , the only hope for white renewal is to wait for the collapse. To hasten the collapse, the Right should subversively support all liberal and leftist demands to raise taxes and expand government spending. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and so too much liberalism will be bad for liberalism as it will bankrupt itself. And then will come the collapse. When it comes, whites must be prepared and ready; they must not be taken by surprise by events but anticipate them and then move in to fill the vacuum when social havoc hits all levels of society. The thing about the Bolsheviks is they’d prepared and were ready for the fall of Russian society by creating a wide network of agents, propagandists, and activists. Though Bolsheviks wouldn’t have come to power if not for WWI and the collapse of Tsarism, it’s also true that they wouldn’t have come to power if they hadn’t been prepared for the eventuality of defeat in WWI and the fall of Tsarism. There are white nationalist voices but not much in the way of effective organization and networking across the nation and across the Western World. If collapse were to happen tomorrow, white nationalists wouldn’t know how to take advantage of the situation. Another problem is the lack of appeal in the areas of virtue and/or visuals. Sam Francis, like too many white nationalists, was visually repugnant. Jared Taylor is visually appealing but lacking in virtue; he’s sneering, snide, and snobby, made worse by the fact that he appeals to gutter trash like Don Black. Taylor is worse than a mere snob; he’s a snob who rummages through in a junkyard.) If THE WILD BUNCH has an element of profundity, it is manifested through a visceral depiction of life as a high-wire act perched between nihilist thrill and honor among thieves; it’s about the morality of immorality, and this contradiction is presented as material for powerful operatics than pensive operation. There’s no need ― and no time ― to explain anything since things are happening all the time. PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is a much calmer and slower-paced ― even sedate ― film, and perhaps Peckipah worried that people might just grow bored or confused unless certain things were spelled out. THE WILD BUNCH is a film that works on the level of ‘action movie’ even if you don’t get the meaning, whereas PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is essentially about the meaning of law and freedom, friendship and betrayal, and youth and aging. It was conceived as a ‘thoughtful’ Western ‘art film’, maybe even an ‘intellectual exercise’. But, for all of Peckinpah’s smarts and insights, he was not an intellectual with a knack for systematic thought. He was not a Kubrick Bergman, Bresson, or Antonioni. The danger of intellectual art is the tendency to either over-explain or over-obfuscate the material. ANDREI RUBLEV worked because Tarkovsky relied on his mastery of images and sounds to convey holy Russia of nature and culture. And STALKER is a sublime fusion of reason and spirituality. But SOLARIS, despite its wonders, ultimately doesn’t work because Lem’s ideas were so much at intellectual and temperamental odds with Tarkovsky’s obsessions. WILD STRAWBERRIES, as masterly as it is, suffers from over-explanation, with dream sequences whose symbolic meanings are obvious; even worse were the two stick characters, one representing Faith and the other Science. It was almost like ‘Art Film for Dummies’; it was, however, saved by fine performances and great cinematography. The opposite of over-explanation is over-obfuscation, as was the case of Antonioni’s later films like THE PASSENGER, whose meanings are so opaque that one wonders if Antonioni himself had any clue as to what he was after. And even worse is a film like THE SACRIFICE ― Tarkovky’s final work ― whose over-explicated premise tries to hide the simplemindedness through all sorts of murky mysticism.
Though one could make a case of MAJOR DUNDEE, THE WILD BUNCH, and STRAW DOGS as ‘art films’, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID was Peckinpah’s first full-fledged attempt as an art director. Peckinpah did his best to add complexity to MAJOR DUNDEE but never had full control over the project slated to be an action-western. Though Peckinpah was born to direct the THE WILD BUNCH, it was a job he took to regain footing in the industry after three years of ‘blacklisting’ for all the troubles associated with DUNDEE. Though STRAW DOGS was his first non-Western and though Peckinpah applied certain intellectual theories ― especially those of Robert Ardrey ― to the material, it was a project in which he was expected to deliver the goods and live up to his reputation as ‘Bloody Sam’, especially after the box office failure of THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE. It was with the box office smash THE GETAWAY that Peckinpah finally got the green light to make a film almost entirely on his own terms. Even so, studio executives expected something like THE WILD BUNCH. After all, it was Peckinpah working on another Western, especially one about Billy the Kid, a notorious outlaw who, according to legend, killed over twenty people. But Peckinpah had different ideas, just like Leone had something else in mind when he made ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST to the dismay of Hollywood that put up the budget expecting another THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.
Film critic John Simon once said of Roman Polanski that his creative freedom in exile was often counterproductive given his propensity toward excess. It was like letting an alcoholic drink all he wants. So, even though complete artistic freedom is ideal, it may be the bane of an overly indulgent artist with a tendency to get carried away. Examples that prove this rule abound. After the success of THE DEER HUNTER, Michael Cimino got the green light to make HEAVEN’S GATE as he chose and went kinda crazy. Coppola’s two best films are still THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER II, both made as a hired gun, whereas his most personal projects range from deeply flawed(APOCALYPSE NOW) to just awful(ONE FROM THE HEART and RUMBLE FISH). David Lean’s earlier films are better than the bloated and egomaniacal RYAN’S DAUGHTER. And Peckinpah’s worst film could be his most personal, the one he made exactly the way he wanted to: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. Paul Seydor called it ‘the worst great American movie’. It’s a powerful idea dragged through the mud of slovenliness, indulgence, egomania, and self-pity. And Bergman’s most difficult-to-watch films ― from the early to mid 70s ― also happen to his most personal(bordering on the private). And John Lennon’s very personal TWO VIRGINS album was even rejected by his biggest fans. The Cult of the Artist is especially problematic in cinema, especially pertaining to the ‘auteur theory’. Film is a collaborative enterprise, and therefore, notwithstanding the crucial(even central)role of the director, it can’t be a one-man show. But once a director makes his name with a series of successes(critical or commercial), he thinks of himself as hot stuff, and therefore, MORE creative freedom for himself can only lead to even greater success ― even though his bigger share of the creative pie may eat into the crucial talents of collaborators. He becomes blind to the fact that his successes were the results of his almost ‘magical’ collaboration with others. Given the green light to do exactly as he pleases, the director as super-auteur comes to conflate his every idea or imagination as the stuff of art. Fellini especially fell into this cult-ish rut after
8 ½, confusing every silly private fantasy as the very stuff of cinematic art.
With PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, it was Peckinpah’s turn to fall into the trap of Cult of the Auteur. Thus, Peckinpah took himself more seriously than the material he was working on warranted. Peckinpah worked seriously on THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS, but he understood the materials on their own terms and worked accordingly. But with PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, he essentially used the material to memorialize his personal(and deeply muddled)view of the West. It didn’t matter that his ideas might be misguided, misconceived, or just ludicrous. He insisted on doing everything his way because he, as a great ‘auteur’, couldn’t possibly be wrong. Take the scene where Paco(Emilio Fernandez) is mortally wounded and makes a ridiculous dying speech. Peckinpah thought it was a beautifully moving scene when it’s almost laughable ― much of BRING ME THE ALFREDO GARCIA is like that scene by the way. Peckinpah’s feelings for that scene illustrates why he couldn’t be an intellectual director. He was too emotional, and his sentiments ― often under the cloud of alcohol and other drugs ― tended to mess up his judgment. He was a ham, and so he worked best when his hamminess was canned and contained. THE WILD BUNCH’s power derives from its teetering between drunkenness and sobriety. When the gang ride into Starbuck, a preacher gives a speech about the devilishness of drink to a Temperance Union gathering. He sounds like a humorless prig whose values are utterly at odds with the Bunch that love to drink and have a good time. But for the Bunch to have a good time, they must secure the loot, and robbing a bank requires sobriety, planning, skill, and sharp instincts. There’s an element of work-before-play in THE WILD BUNCH. On some level, as much as Pike Bishop likes to have a good time, he’s an heir of the Protestant Work Ethic. He wants to do the job right. And Peckinpah was in similar situation while making the movie. Though naturally excessive and hedonistic, he knew he had to prove himself as a reliable, disciplined, and bankable filmmaker. Thus, more than ever before or after, Peckinpah kept his wildness in check. In this sense, the title “The Wild Bunch” is somewhat ironic since Pike and his gang must learn to be sober, cooperative, and coordinated to pull off their ‘wild’ heists. They must think beyond their guns; they must be un-wild in order to succeed as ‘wild’ bunch of men. They gotta be skilled boxers and not just wild sluggers.
This fact is the very heart of sports and arts. What is wilder and more violent than boxing? But boxers don’t win by being wild and crazy. Sugar Ray Robinson was as fearsome as boxers came, but he didn’t just go into the ring and act like an animal. He fought like a consummate professional who knew all the tricks in the book. In the animal world, a wild cat is as ferocious as they come, but it’s hard to think of another animal that is as controlled, precise, and focused as a cat. Though cats fight violently, there is always an efficient mechanism at work in their calculations and movements. And in Rock music, some of the greatest artists were guys who conveyed chaos through control. Hendrix dropped bombs but piloted the plane. The Who sounded crazy but had absolute mastery over the craziness. Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” is one of the wildest songs but with a built-in‘logic’ at its core. This is something punk rockers and heavy metal rockers never understood in their mostly shapeless dementedness bordering on retardation.
Why do BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, OCTOBER, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, THE WILD BUNCH, JAWS, APOCALYPSE NOW, and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. have some of the greatest action scenes? Because of the controlled wildness. There lies the sublimity ― in the fusion of ecstatic passion(Dionysian) and exacting expression(Apollonian). This goes for the best of modern jazz. People without ears think it’s just formless noise when, as with the music of Hendrix and The Who, there is order within the raging chaos ― the eye at the center of the hurricane.
Peckinpah understood this creative tension while directing THE WILD BUNCH. In an early scene, after having failed to kill or capture the top bandits, the bounty hunters ask the lawman Harrigan(Albert Dekker) if they could have ‘some liquor money for tonight’, whereupon Harrigan says NO and commands them to go after the Bunch right away. The bounty hunters, like the Bunch, wanna have a good time, but they have a job to do and better do it or else. (One notable difference between THE WILD BUNCH and PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is the former was made in survivalist mode whereas the latter was made in preservationist mode. THE WILD BUNCH was indeed survivalist for Peckinpah in more ways than one. After three years in the wilderness due to the ‘blacklist’, it was a do-or-die moment of truth for Peckinpah. He finally got a chance to work on another project ― especially one that was tailor-made for his talents from head to toe ― , and he had to prove his worth as a director or lose his chance to work on another major production. It’s like the scene in the movie where Pike says to Dutch about the train robbery they’re about to pull, “This is our last go-around. I say we do it right.” A lot was at stake. So, Peckinpah was especially motivated. He knew he had to have the edge and worked as hard on that film as possible. Coincidentally, the story itself was survivalist in tone, and not merely in a live-or-die sense. Psychologically as well as physically, it’s a story built around constant movement and tension. Even when Pike Bishop is lying around a campfire, he’s haunted by his private demons. Something is always nagging or eating away at all the characters. Angel seethes with anger because Mapache killed his father, took his girl, and plundered his village. Harrigan wants sweet revenge against Pike Bishop, the guy who raided his railroad several times. Dutch’s conscience is tormented by having abandoned Angel, the guy who saved his life during the train robbery. Everyone is at odds with the world, with one another, and with themselves. There is much bickering among the Bunch. And Deke Thorton feels nothing but contempt for the ragged bounty hunters he has to lead, and bounty hunters resent his air of superiority. From the very first images of ants and scorpions, of the Bunch disguised as soldiers riding into town, of the Temperance Union at odds with Western norms, and of the Law using near-criminal tactics to kill/capture criminals, there’s no room for relaxation. The whole world, physical and psychological, feels like a ceaseless war between ants and scorpions, a non-stop Hellstrom Chronicle. And even innocence isn’t innocent as we watch little children smiling and laughing as they hover over the war of the insects. Everyone is struggling for survival and supremacy ― for money, power, reputation, honor, pride, dignity, self-worth, vengeance, etc. ― but deadly obstacles are everywhere. And even if bullets don’t kill you, conscience may attack you like a swarm of bees ― as are the cases with Bishop with Thorton and Dutch with Angel. Bishop can never forget that he left Thorton to be caught, and Dutch can’t let go of having done nothing when Mapache took Angel prisoner. And Thorton is burdened with guilt for having sided with the Law to kill his friend Pike to save himself from the whip.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is also thorny in many ways, but the emotions have been crafted into a crown of thorns. It’s more a work of iconography than iconoclasm. Thus, there’s little sense of urgency or tension, psychological or physical. Garrett is tormented but also resigned to the torment, as if he must play the Judas role for the fulfillment of Billy’s legend as the christ-like martyr of Old West. As with the Biblical Judas, Garrett really has no choice since the story is set up to lead to the sacralization of Billy. Thus, the conflict feels flat. It’s preservationist than survivalist, i.e. it’s as if both Garrett and Billy are self-consciously aware of their thematic significance and acting accordingly to preserve their mythic resonance. Though what they must do isn’t easy, they’re ‘comfortable’ in their roles as signifiers of certain myths of the West. The men of THE WILD BUNCH struggle and grapple with ever-shifting challenges whereas the fellas in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID sit around and wait for fate to deal out the last cards. Fate looms heavy throughout the film, even more so than in THE SEVENTH SEAL where the knight at least did his best to stay one move ahead of Death. The odd thing about Billy is that as ruthless as he is in securing his survival, his devil-may-care attitude suggests he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. THE WILD BUNCH is like watching animals in nature while PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is like walking through a mausoleum. From the very opening scene, there’s a sense of fait accompli. Even so, the cemetery-ness of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID might have worked if Peckinpah didn’t sometimes use it like a latrine. It’s a work of tears and urine.) Peckinpah at his best was an artist, but he got drunk on the bottle of ego, i.e. self-consciousness of being an artist. Like Coppola, he made better art when he didn’t think in terms of Art. Given the magnitude of their talent and the force of their personalities, Peckinpah and Coppola didn’t need to force their ‘meaning’ and ‘personality’ on their material. And like most artists, they were better with expression than ideas. The more they intellectualized and/or conceptualized, the more they tripped over themselves. Indeed, the conceptual nature of the flashbacks in THE WILD BUNCH is problematic in its contrivance but work only because the rest of the movie hurtles forward with such power. Only a rare director like Stanley Kubrick could handle ideas as masterfully as the expression. Peckinpah, at his best, was a man of film sense, of intuition and instinct, and it was fatal when he tried to explain what his vision was all about.
The element of inter-cultural dynamic has always been a big part of Peckinpah’s films, partly owing to the nature of the Western itself. Many Westerns are about white man vs the red man, or white man and red man coming to some kind of uneasy truce. Anglo-Mexican themes have been a feature of Westerns, though not as prominent perhaps because Anglos found most Mexicans ranging from mildly amusing to rather dull. But some of the best Westerns or near-Westerns deal with American-Mexican tensions ― other than Peckinpah’s own movies, consider VERA CRUZ, VIVA ZAPATA and TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE(not classic Westerns but sharing the same time and place), DUCK YOU SUCKER, A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL, MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE DOLLARS TRILOGY, THE ALAMO, QUE VIVA MEXICO, and many others. The American-Mexican dynamic has been more interesting than the one between America and Canadia because Canada seems just like a bigger version of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and some New England states ― a whiter version of America. But Mexico has been historically, culturally, racially, and politically quite different, a place for ideals and revolution(the future), a place of crime and nightmares, a place of romance and nostalgia(the past that stays the same forever), a place of corruption and dysfunction, a place of anarchy and liberation, a place of gangsters and thieves, a place of salt-of-the-earth folks, and etc.
Mexico is the great Other representing all the virtues or all the vices absent in Anglo-America. For some Americans, Mexico is the hell-hole America must never become. For others, Mexico retains the spirit of the Old West lost in overly modern and glass-and-steel America. MAJOR DUNDEE, THE WILD BUNCH, and BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA are among the most Mexican-packed American movies ever made. (Among non-Westerns, it’s tough to beat Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL even if Heston makes a rather odd-looking Mexican.) Peckinpah’s view of Mexico was on the positive side, but then, a romantic/hamantic like Peckinpah tended to have a lopsided view often contrary to facts on the ground. And besides, what appealed to Peckinpah ― alcohol, drugs, whores, fiesta and siesta, backwardness, and etc ― about Mexico wouldn’t have appealed to many Americans. Peckinpah, while having some conservative instincts ― especially about men and women ― , tended to be anti-racialist. During WWII, he had hoped to marry a Chinese girl while serving in Asia. His second wife was a Mexican woman. Pike Bishop’s great love of his life was a Mexican woman, and he sleeps with a Mexican woman on the night before he goes to take on Mapache. Dundee too sleeps with a Mexican woman. And Garrett is married to a Mexican woman. And later he sleeps with a bunch of women ― white, Mexican, black, octoroon, etc. And Billy and his gang seem to sleep mostly with Mexican women. And Benny has a Mexican girlfriend in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA And the outlaw couple in THE GETAWAY escape to Mexico. One might say there’s a kind of ‘sexual imperialism’ here, with tall white guys taking Mexican women, as if US is the Man and Mexico is the Woman, and maybe Mexican women appealed to Peckinpah because they were more traditional and womanly, as opposed to the more modern or ‘cold’ wasp women.
There are, of course, other inter-cultural themes in Westerns, perhaps the biggest involving the white man and the red man. This is especially interesting in the context of ‘invasive diversity’ or ‘predatory diversity’, i.e. the increase in diversity can paradoxically lead to an eventual reduction of diversity due to the aggressive nature of the newcomers. Consider the introduction of rats on the Galapagos Island. Initially, it added to the diversity since a new species now lived alongside the original inhabitants of the island. But as rats spread, they fed on the eggs of various native species, many of which died out. The introduction of cats had a similar impact on some Hawaiian islands. Feral cats began eating up all sorts of birds and small mammals native to the island, driving some to near-extinction. As with the rats, the introduction of cats made the Hawaiian islands initially more diverse, but the predatory nature of cats eventually reduced the original diversity. Same could be said of devastation wrought by the introduction of pigs into certain places. And the German carp and the Asian carp have damaged the eco-system of the Americas. If some species are downright predatory ― like rats and cats ― , some species practice a form of ‘invasive diversity’ that indirectly undermines the original diversity of the eco-system. One such is the accidental introduction of zebra mussels into the Great Lakes. Though zebra mussels don’t directly feed on fish and other creatures of the lake, by filtering lake water by feeding on micro-organisms the mussels make the water clearer, allowing more sunlight to reach the bottom, which increases the level of algae, which then can cause harm to many species. Thus, increased diversity can undermine the original diversity and lead to a new homogeneity. This was indeed the case with the ‘predatory diversity’ and ‘invasive diversity’ that took place in the New World. When the white man first appeared in the Americas, south and north, it added to the diversity. Instead of just ‘Indians’, there was now ‘Indians’ and whites. But white diseases spread and killed off multitudes of the original inhabitants. All sorts of Indian tribes, north and south, were wiped out by white man’s diseases in the millions or even possibly in the tens of millions. And then, the white man employed superior weapons to drive out the natives off the land that had belonged to their ancestors for tens of thousands of years. Thus, introduction of human diversity in the New World had a devastating impact on the original diversity of the Americas. But ‘predatory diversity’ or ‘invasive diversity’ doesn’t have to physically remove the original diversity in order to bring about a new form of political/cultural homogeneity. We saw this happen with the rise of Jews in America. Jews, a rat-like and virus-like race, initially added to the cultural, intellectual, and political diversity of America. Thanks to the rise of Jewish power and influence, American culture went from Anglo-dominated to one with more contenders and competitors. But Jews eventually drove out the wasps just like rats ate up all the eggs of Galapagos tortoises, and today, Jews essentially hog the cultural voice and vision of America. Though we see diverse faces on TV, they must all read from the scripts written by Jews and their allies/puppets. Though Jewish victory has essentially been cultural and economic, Jews also want to destroy the White Egg, the very source of the white race. Jews do this by turning white women onto non-white men, especially Negroes. Jews also do it by increasing ‘predatory diversity’ and ‘invasive diversity’ in the form of more Illegals, Africans, and Asians into US and more Muslims and Africans into Europe. Jews have brainwashed white people into chanting the slogan ‘diversity is our strength’, but the kind of diversity affecting the US and EU are predatory and invasive in nature or by design. Muslims and Africans in Europe have very high birthrates, tend to be of lower IQ, tend to commit lots of crime, and leech off public services. The rise of Mexican numbers in the US has been altering the national character of the American Southwest(and other parts). Also, problems associated with Mexican-Americans are driving many white Americans out of SW states, making those places even more Mexican(partly in accordance with the Mexican dream of ‘reconquista’). And we all know what happens when there are ‘too many’ blacks. Initially, it produces a boost in diversity, but as non-blacks fearful of black crime, violence, and lunacy move out, the neighborhood becomes homogeneously black. Blacks, being bigger, tougher, and more aggressive, are a predatory race(as Jews are an invasive race). Jewish ‘invasive diversity’ and black ‘predatory diversity’ work hand in hand against white people. But given the nature of Jewish ambition and Negro thuggery, the increase in their kind of ‘diversity’ only leads to less diversity. Thus, as lots of blacks move in, a once diverse community made up of peaceful non-blacks may eventually become homogeneously black. Thus, not all diversities are the same. While some diversities are complementary and compatible, others are invasive and predatory and likely to pave the way for a new form of homogeneity. Consider American culture, intellectualism, business, and politics. The rise of Jews in the 50s and 60s made it more diverse ― as a competition between Wasps and Jews ― , but as Jews kept grabbing more influence and more power, American politics and culture became more homogeneous, with Jews setting the agendas for everyone who just bows down to Jews. In the Democratic Party, blacks, gays, illegal aliens, and feminists suck up to Jews. And in the GOP, everyone sucks up to ‘neocon’ Jews. On foreign policy, it’s “Israel, Israel, Israel.” In history, it’s “Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust.” In morality, all we hear is about is “antisemitism and racism and homophobia, antisemitism and racism and homophobia, antisemitism and racism and homophobia.” And even the lionization of Michael King, aka Martin L. King, is just a construction of Jewish power as Jews are using ‘white guilt’ to browbeat and control white people. (Though it’s wrong to collectively speak of all Jews as an aggregate, Jews say ALL Germans and ALL whites must be accountable for their ‘historical sins’.) Just as there can be great diversity within homogeneity ― Japan is homogeneously made up of one ethnic people, but its culture is the product of great diversity with influences from India, China, Europe, and America ― , there can arise a great homogeneity within diversity. Globalism, for example, has made us aware of the great diversity around the world, but it has also made more different peoples share in the same narrow tastes in American fast food, Jewish-controlled Hollywood movies, and Negro jigger-jiver Rap. Though globalism gives us access to more choices from all over the world, increasingly more people are choosing to wallow in just a few dominant offerings. While some elite cosmopolitans or eccentric bohemians may take advantage of globalism to discover more about the bigger world, the great masses all around the world wanna watch TRANSFORMERS, eat Big Mac, and wiggle their butts to Jay-Z. But even among educated elites with genuine interest in the richness of the world, there is a kind of homogeneity in terms of attitudes and style. Take the SWPL outlook. Swipples in urban centers may go to Thai restaurants and ‘indigenous’ boutique shops, but it’s all part of an effete, spineless, and dweeby way of life centered around the attitudology of Hipster Niceness. Most Swipples dress, think, and act like Matthew Yglesias. They are a bunch of annoying dorks, and no matter what kind of food they like from all over the world, they are all for ‘gay marriage’. Ideologically and intellectually, they are among the most homogeneous and predictable people on the planet, and the SWPL ideal is spreading all over the world among the privileged ‘cosmopolitans’. So, a Hindu call-taker in Mumbai, a yuppie beaner in Mexico, a urban Chinaman in Hong Kong, and a Irish computer programmer could all be part of global SWPL-ism. (Of course, Jews are key to the New World Order since they control most of the levers of information, finance, media, entertainment ― a powerful social control tool ―, law, and academia in the West that set the standards for elites all over the world. Jews are, by far, the most fascinating and most frustrating people on Earth, and most frustrating is the fact that most gentiles do not approach Jews as Jews approach them. Jews approach Jew-Goy relations in terms of ruthless and devious game of power while most gentiles see it as the most beautiful friendship either out of naivete, stupidity, goodwill, ‘white guilt’, or cowardice ― out of fear of Jewish power that can effectively blacklist and silence just about anyone in elite circles. Once Jews have purged elite circles of all their ‘enemies’ and rivals, they will focus on the rest of us. And since we won’t have anyone in positions of power to stand up for our rights, freedom, and interests, Jews will pretty get to do as they please with us. Most people are sheep and just go along with the elites. If there are no pro-white people in elite circles, there won’t be anyone of consequence to stand up for and protect our interests. And as for white folks who refuse to be sheep, they will be slaughtered like sheep since all the institutions of power will work together to clamp down on them. For example, when the likes of Elena Kagan ban free speech in the future, they’ll have the power to order the American police to go after anyone who dares to violate laws on ‘hate speech’. And cops will do as they’re ordered because they’ll be fired, lose all their benefits, and may even be prosecuted for not having
complied.) . The crazy thing about the Jew/Goy relation, especially pertaining to Zionism, is that the very support for Jews among goyim make Jews fearful and paranoid of goyim. The more the goyim cheer for Israel and Zionism, the more Jews distrust goyim. How can this be? Why would Jews distrust a people who are supporting them? It’s because Jews realize how stupid and gullible the goyim are, how easily they can be swayed from one position to another. If Germans, for instance, could go from a relatively tolerant people to the vilest anti-Semites and then become the most philo-Semitic people in two generations, what does it say about goy psychology? If Germans could so quicky go from killing millions of Jews to hugging millions of Jews, who’s to say they might not go back to killing millions of Jews? Germans may be ‘good’ now, but the fact that they’d gone from extreme evil to extreme good in so short a time is proof that most people are incapable of thought and think like sheep and can be made to believe anything: “Jews are the source of all evil” or “Jews are the source of all wisdom”. Indeed, same goes for ‘gay marriage’. Twenty years ago, over 90% of Americans would have laughed at the idea. Today, 60% of those under thirty think it’s the MOST IMPORTANT moral issue of the day. Did people on their own begin to think ‘good thoughts’ all of a sudden? No, of course not. Most people don’t think at all and go with whatever the media and schools tell them is true. (This may be why Jews are not to keen on push the teaching of evolution in schools. Though Jews are opposed to the Christian Right’s agenda of teaching Creationism and Intelligent Design in public schools, Jews don’t go out of their ways to promote the TRUTH of evolution. Jews and liberals believe that the truth of evolution is important in their own community, and they sneer at the fools on the Christian Right who believe that the world is only 10,000 yrs old. But, Jews don’t attack Creationism or Intelligent Design with the same fervor that they attack ‘homophobia’ or ‘antisemitism’. Why not? It could be because Jews would rather have American conservatives embrace Creationism/Intelligent Design than Darwinism. If the American Right were to abandon Evangelical Christianity and embrace the theories of Darwin, they might eventually come around to thinking like James Watson and Kevin MacDonald. White conservatives would no longer adhere to the irrational mythology of all men having been created equal by God and come to accept the rational position that the races are indeed different and that certain races, especially Jews and Negroes, pose a grave threat to the white race. So, even though liberal Jews feign outrage over polls showing that 46% of Americans believe in Creationism, they’d rather have that than have that 46% embrace Darwinism and all that implies about the evolution of different races. Also, if the American Right were to embrace the habit of thinking rationally and seeing reality for what it is, they might pose a much bigger threat to the Jewish-controlled social and intellectual order. The neocon Ben Stein, I believe, is too smart to actually believe in stuff like Intelligent Design. So, why does he pretend to do so? Because he believes most white conservatives will be less dangerous to Jews as God-worshipers than as evolution-and-race-believers.) So, Jews know that today’s philo-Semitism is not something that can be taken for granted indefinitely. Most Americans are philo-Semitic because they’ve been brainwashed to be that way by Jewish domination of information, ideas, images and sounds, law, finance, and etc. Jews are nervous that Americans are so blind to moral contradictions in the support of Zionism. American Jews have been ragging on the white man over the historical guilt of ‘genocide of Native Americans’, ‘slavery of blacks’, ‘xenophobia against illegal immigrants’ and etc. American Jews also ceaselessly attacked South Africa for its ‘white supremacy’ and ‘racist Apartheid’. And Americans were morally won over almost completely to Jewish liberalism. Even American conservatives denounce the ‘evil past’ of Apartheid South Africa and get down on their knees to kiss the big fat ass of MLK. Pussyboys like Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, say they weep when listening to the speeches of MLK, who was really nothing but a lowlife jigger-jiver doing a prophet act. So, if liberal Jewish morality is now our national paragon of virtue, and if most Americans have been won over, then how is it possible that so many Americans are pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian? Just think about it. Based on the values of Jewish liberalism, Israel is a ‘racist-fascist’ state, an ‘imperialist’ nation oppressing a ‘people of color’, a practitioner of Zionist apartheid, and a ‘xenophobic’ state with a strictly nationalist immigration policy. And even within the US, isn’t it odd that Jews, who make such noise about ‘equality’ and ‘social justice’, are by far the richest, most powerful, most privileged, most unequal, and most influential people? Isn’t there something odd about an America that makes so much noise about ‘equal treatment’ and ‘fairness’ but favors the powerful Jewish-American community in all areas of domestic and foreign policy? Isn’t there something strange about an America that says ‘all humans are created equal’ but defacto supports the view that Jewish lives are more valuable since history tells us that Jewish victims in the Holocaust matter more than all the other victims of wars and horrors in the twentieth century. I mean who cares about Ukrainians? (Jews are the masters of Victim Supremacism and go around telling everyone on all five continents that they suffered far more than all the rest of humanity combined. And if anyone disagrees, he or she is labeled as ‘antisemitic’. As Victim Supremacists, Jews see themselves only as victims and never as victimizers of other peoples. Even their power and success are explained and justified in terms of victim-hood. How many times have we heard that Jews were FORCED to be good at finance and intellectualism because they weren’t allowed to own land? So, there you go. According to the Jewish Victim Supremacist narrative, Jews had all wanted to be good decent honest farmers, but evil goyim prevented them from toiling on the soil and so Jews turned to moneylending and middlemen occupations; never mind Jews had specialized in those fields for thousands of years before they even set foot on European soil. Jews dispossessed Palestinians but justify this history of dispossession as a defensive measure against ‘neo-Nazi’ Palestinians. Zionists, with over a hundred illegal nuclear weapons, use their control of US and EU to condemn Iran that hasn’t even a single nuclear bomb. Israel, with illegal nukes, gets special treatment while Iran’s economy is isolated from the world. To any fair-minded viewer, Israel is the bully and Iran is the victim, but the Victim Supremacist narrative enforced by globalist Jewish power has fooled most Americans and Europeans that poor helpless Israel needs to be defended from all-powerful Iranians who’ve also been falsely attributed with saying they wanna ‘wipe Israel off the map’. It never seems to dawn on whites that Jews treat whites like Jews treat Palestinians/Iranians. Given what Jews are doing to whites, one would think whites should come around to thinking, ‘we are all Palestinians’ as David Duke has done. But most white conservatives have more in common with the Blogger with Ernest who doesn’t care how much Palestinians are beaten, brutalized, or murdered. Part of the reason is racial. Deep in their hearts, white conservatives prefer white Jews to ‘sand nigger’ Arabs. But there’s another factor, that of power. Palestinians are a people of no consequence, lacking in money, brilliance, talent, and skills. Whether white conservatives are for or against Palestinians, the latter cannot be of much help to whites due to their mediocrity and poverty. In contrast, even though Jews are currently anti-white, their power is immense and real. And Jewish power will be decisive for the future of the West. So, even if it’s a long shot that Jews will ever side with whites, white conservatives believe it’s the only chance they have. Even if white conservatives were to win over Palestinians and Arab-Americans to their side, whites have little to gain from the alliance. Palestinians don’t control the global economy; Arab-Americans don’t control government, education, and the media. Jews control those things, and politics has been, more often than not, the art/science of sucking up to those with power. Indeed, even in order to play opposition-politics, one needs the backing of powerful forces. The American Revolution had the backing of colonialist elites, France, Spain, and Prussia. It was a rebellion against the British Crown but one led by the elites. And Nazis came to power with the support of rich conservative Germans. And Lenin was helped by Imperial Germany during WWI to infiltrate and subvert Russia, and a lot of funds for the Bolsheviks came from Jewish capitalists in the West. Anyway, how many times have we heard that some Grand Mufti of the Palestinians sided with Hitler during WWII? That little factoid had been invoked endlessly to justify Zionist occupation and oppression of Palestinians. It is never placed in political context, i.e. the ‘alliance’ was made because ‘the enemy of your enemy is your friend’: As Palestine was under British Imperialism, Palestinians obviously gravitated to the enemies of British power. Similarly, weren’t the American Revolutionaries allied with authoritarian Prussia and absolute-monarchist France against the British? Wasn’t the US allied with the totalitarian Stalinist USSR against Germany during WWII? Didn’t US develop ties with Maoist China to contain
the Soviet Empire? If it’s acceptable for a powerful nation like the US to make alliances with regimes known for mass murder, why is it so difficult to understand why a powerless people like the Palestinians sought help from powerful Germans against British Imperialism? But Victim Supremacism owned by Jews allows them to get away with just about anything. Jews are now victimizers of the white race that’s been indoctrinated and encouraged to suicidally hate itself by Jewish controllers of the media. While the suicidal, self-loathing, and guilt-ridden element has always been a feature of Western Civilization due to the death cult of Christianity, this zealously moralistic ― even pathologically moralistic to the point of enthusiastically embracing self-extinction ― mind-set had always been held in check by an aggressive and proud white elite. While Western moralists and spiritualists have always pontificated about conscience and reform, the elite warriors/tribalists insisted on their people being instilled with pride, confidence, and glory of power. Since the masses think and do as the elites guide them, masses of whites were filled with racial and national pride promoted by the elites. But once the elites were taken over by Jews and liberals ― and with even conservative elites sucking up to Jews and liberals to prove that they are not ‘racist’ ― , the white masses only heard one thing trickling down from the elites: “feel guilty, eradicate all feelings of white racial pride, unity, power, and interests.” And so, we now have an America where the likes of Clinton and Bush tell white Americans to embrace ‘diversity’ at the behest of their Jewish masters. Thus, the suicidal and pathologically moralistic tendency of the Christian West is no longer held in check by a proud, confident, and aggressive white elite whose agenda is to instill racial and cultural pride in their own people. In the UK, the elites once educated the masses to feel pride in God, Queen, and Country. Today, there is no pro-white elite in the UK. The elites corrupt the masses with dumb entertainment dominated by jigger-jivers/obscene Jews and push policies that punish any white person who stands up for a British Britain and against an Afro-Caribbean/Pakistani one. Thus, the moral pathology of the West has been allowed to get out of hand. When held in check, it had a certain value in rousing the white man’s conscience when his kind committed a great wrong; it pushed for social progress and moral contemplation of ‘what is to be done?’ But too much of a good thing is always a bad thing. It’s like animals have both the fight and the flight mechanism. An animal would be foolish to fight all the time or to take flight all the time. Similarly, it’s foolish for the white race to think only morally and never mightily. Not only does it lead to racial suicide but to a host of mental problems, and Jews sort of understand this. All people need to feel some kind of might. So, since the white race is not allowed to feel and use their might against Jews, blacks, homos, and Illegals, Jews have directed American white rage at Muslims/Arabs/Iranians, Chinese and Yellow Peril, and increasingly Russia, a nation of white people. Jews sure love to pit whites against whites ― white Americans vs white Russians, white liberals vs white conservatives, etc. Of course, we can’t blame only the Jews for the fall of white pride and power. The biggest culprit was Hitler who began wars against white Poles and white Russians. While it’s true that Jews in UK, France, and the US pushed the regimes in those countries to wage war on Germans ― white vs white ― , the true crime of white-vs-white war was instigated by Germans when they needlessly attacked Eastern European nations. Even as late as 1941, Hitler could have held together a united white empire if he just hadn’t attacked the USSR. Anyway, given the horrors of WWII, it’s been fashionable for Jews and liberals to say there’s NOTHING GOOD about nationalism and racism ― though WWII was really instigated by imperialism than nationalism, i.e. National Socialism wouldn’t have done much damage if Hitler kept it within the borders of Germany. The problem wasn’t nationalism or even racism per se but its pathological manifestation. But then, pathological moralism/universalism can be just as murderous and dangerous, and this has been proven by the history of communism, which caused the deaths of tens of millions, and by radical/pathological anti-racism that has destroyed the economy of Zimbabwe and will eventually lead to the collapse of South Africa. And in America, pathological anti-racism premised on the falsehood of the equality of the races has led to disasters of Detroit and the horrible epidemic of black-on-white violence. And the pretense that there are no racial differences has forced most Americans to close to their eyes to superior Jewish IQ that has enabled Jews to gain elite control over all Americans. Though pathological racism of the Nazis were evil, the pathological anti-racism pushed by Jews will do more damage to the West. If Nazi racism was a great danger to Jews, Jewish anti-racism poses a grave threat to the entire white race and their ancestral lands. Jewish anti-racism is especially foul because most Jews know the truth of racial differences; they know that blacks are stronger and that they themselves are smarter; they just don’t want white people to think about such things since a rational assessment of reality could reawaken the white race into an angry social force eager to kick the Jewish ass that deserves to be kicked. The great irony of history is that Jews today are doing everything that justifies almost every ‘antisemitic’ rationale in the past. Just take one look at the Jewish role in finance, government, foreign policy, media, education, porn, immigration policy, gay agenda, gambling, and racial policy, and it should be obvious to any sane rational person that Jews do indeed constitute the ‘hostile minority’ as Kevin MacDonald calls them. Just think about it. Jewish liberals have morally and intellectually bullied and pressured all of us to embrace ‘racial equality’, ‘cultural equality’, and ‘international equality’. And indeed, if a white American spoke of ‘white interests’, Jews would flay him alive in no time with their vast powers. However, Jews themselves can violate the very moral principles that they promote in America and in the Middle East. Consider that almost no Jewish-American has died in Middle East wars even though Jews almost totally control foreign policy; the likes of Hillary Clinton, John Bolton, and Samatha Powers are mere puppets. In the 60s, Jewish liberals accused White America of ‘anti-black blood libel’ because too many blacks died in the war in Vietnam that had been instigated by white elites. Jews made a big fuss about that ‘injustice’, but almost no one ― not even on the Left ― talks about how Jews control foreign policy today but gentiles do all the dying in war. Jews are not dumb; they are fully aware of the moral/intellectual dissonance when it comes to Jewish power: For example, when white Afrikaners oppressed blacks in South Africa, that was evil, but when Israelis continue to oppress Palestinians ― a far more civilized and less dangerous people than blacks ― , that’s no problem. Mandela, though having committed acts of terrorism, is said to be a great man, but Palestinian terrorists are just plain evil, and there’s nothing more to think about. Though Jews like Menachem Begin committed wanton acts of terrorism back in the 1940s, they are hailed as heroes. But if anyone commits terrorism against Jews to combat Zionist oppression, they’re the New Nazis. Such moral logic of course doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t morally or intellectually add up, and JEWS KNOW IT. But Jews realize that most American goyim have swallowed the Jewish BS hook, line, and sinker. Thus, Jews realize that American support for Jews and Israel is founded on idiocy, moronic-ness, and retarded-ness. So, American morality is shallow, mindless, and easily to manipulate. If Americans really took Jewish liberal morality to heart, they would be siding with Palestinians, they would be challenging Jewish privilege and clout on Wall Street, Jewish abuse of laws, and all the other Jewish abuses of power. But Americans just suck up to Jews like dogs to their masters. This worries Jews. It’s convinced Jews that there is no deep-rooted American morality one way or the other. As Charles Foster Kane said, most Americans “will think what I tell them to think.” So, American morality comes down to “who has the power to fill American dummies with ‘values’ and ‘righteousness’”. Americans who worship Jews and support ‘gay marriage’ today could just as easily support Palestinians and revile Jews/gays tomorrow, all depending on who controls the media and other institutions. American dumbness is now manipulated by Jews, but dumb people can easily be manipulated against Jews. One might say most white people are not dumb, but intelligence is always relative; white people are dumb relative to Jews; also the racial personality of Northern Europeans tends to be straight and earnest compared to the cunning wiliness of Jews, and so Jews are more likely to toy with the goy than vice versa. A person with an IQ of 100 is a genius compared to someone with an IQ of 80, but he’s a dummy to someone with an IQ of 150. To Jews, most American gentiles are dummies. The fact that Americans have embraced liberal Jewish morality yet fully supports Zionist ‘racist, fascist, and imperialist’ oppression of Palestinians without seeing any contradiction is sufficient proof to Jews that goyim are serious dummies. Thus, massive goy support of Jews/Israel makes Jews both happy and nervous. Happy because goyim are their lapdogs but nervous because goyim, being
so dumb, can be made to believe just about anything. Thus, if an effective counter-Jewish force were to arise in America and effectively instill goyim with anti-Jewish views, Jews fear that their gains over the decades can be reversed almost overnight. After all, dummies, like children and dogs, can be led to believe and do anything.)
Inter-cultural dynamic was a feature WITHIN white society itself as the Wild West came under Anglo-American domination. Many Westerns are about the cultural conflict between free-ranging ranchers and ‘sod-busting’ farmers, mostly famously in Shane. There’s also the dichotomy between working for social order ― building churches, schools, and law courts ― and preserving libertine freedoms ― saloons, whorehouses, gambling, gun-slinging, etc. perhaps most famously illustrated in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.
(To be sure, more freedom didn’t necessarily mean equal freedom. The freedom from Rule of Law in the Wild West allowed for a few men with hired guns to hog much of the land and power. It’s like in the ‘freedom’ of nature, the only rule is might-is-right: a big bear will take food from a small coyote, a pack of wolves will run around and do as it pleases. This was the case in the New Mexico when a handful of ruthless men with hired gunmen were gained control over vast territories for a time. Thus, freedom without the Rule of Law can lead to the concentration of freedom in the hands of a few who can then trample on the freedom of others. And it is often the fear of this concentrated power that makes a lot of people support more government as the bulwark against the oligarchy. People on the Right tend to see bigger government as synonymous with less freedom for the people, but many people freely choose more government because they feel threatened, exploited, and oppressed by the powerful oligarchs who play fast and loose with concentrated wealth, clout, and power. This is why many Americans wanna give more power to the government to control Wall Street; but what they don’t understand is that Wall Street and the government are part of the same Jewish-controlled power-complex.)
There was also the cultural conflict of Eastern values vs Western values, finely illustrated in THE BIG COUNTRY, with the East standing for supremacy of the impersonal law and the West standing for man’s worth based on individual courage and toughness.
Peckinpah was something of an oddity. A descendant of a family of judges and lawmen, he had a romantic fixation with the outlaw. To be sure, his love of the outlaw was metaphorical than actual. It’s not like Peckinpah thought armed robbery or killing people was good. Instead, what he admired about the outlaw was the spirit of independence, nomadism, adventure, and toughness. Peckinpah was an outlaw of the spirit. Just as some people love gangster movies for what the gangster stands for than what he actually does, Peckinpah loved the idea of maverick individuals unbound by conventional rules. Given the nature of creativity ― where originality and individuality are crucial ― , it’s easy to understand why artists have long been drawn to outlaws. But sometimes, people can confuse metaphors for the real thing, and Peckinpah somewhat fell into this trap in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID. He was so impressed by Billy as an embodiment of free spirit that he failed to address the true nature of Billy’s penchant for violence. It would have been a richer film if Peckinpah, even while portraying the mythic side of Billy, had taken an honest look at his darker side ― as was the case with the outlaw in THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, one of the great masterpieces of the last decade. There was some of that in Arthur Penn’s LEFT-HANDED GUN, where Billy comes face to face with his own myth and realizes he’s not it and it’s not him.
To some extent, it was the inter-cultural conflict within White America that drove Peckinpah to embrace Mexicans. He found the civilized forces of White America to be too uptight and upright and morally hypocritical to boot.. And he found the ‘white’ Jews of Hollywood to be too cunning and devious. He knew there was a lot of bad stuff in Mexico too. Emilio Fernandez plays the rotten Mapache in THE WILD BUNCH and a no less rotten El Jefe in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. Peckinpah saw the corruption and poverty all over in Mexico. But he found Mexicans down-to-earth, more honest(even in their dishonesty, as Mexicans weren’t such good liars or had to lie to ‘survive’, which made the lie more justifiable), and a worthy object of his sympathies. In some ways, he felt among Mexicans as Bono did among Africans. But if Bono is a real airhead, Peckinpah knew himself to be a man of illusions, someone chasing after rainbows. He knew he was a rotten son of a bitch who ruined a series of marriages. But it was his nature to dream of the romantic past, and ‘backward’ and ‘authentic’ Mexico served as the canvas for his imagination. Mexico was like a Dali painting or a Bunuel film. It was the subconscious sewage-dreamworld spilling over into conscious reality. All the opposites ― white and brown, ancient and modern, traditional and contemporary, village and city, reactionary and revolutionary, humble and aggressive, spiritual and materialistic ― seemed to co-exist in their most extreme manifestations in Mexico. BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA begins as if it’s taking place in the 19th century but then the setting turns out to be the present. Consider the dream scene in Bunuel’s LOS OLIVDADOS where the bitch-whore of a mother is transformed into a saint madonna; she smiles with maternal affection while holding a chunk of raw meat for her son that is however snatched by an usurper who springs out from underneath the bed as the mother seems to float away. It is SO Mexico and also SO Spain ― Bunuel’s nation of origin ― given Spain’s own conflict of extremes in spirituality, politics, economics, culture, ideology, geography, etc. This quality made Spain and Mexico seem more surreal. Generally, the more advanced Western nations made a clear transition from the past to the present, from superstition to science, from agriculture to industry, and etc. But Spain and Mexico were places where things that should have vanished with the rise of modernity lived on. It conformed to no single dominant reality; instead, there were many ‘realities’ side by side, and this may explain the strange quality of Spanish artists like Dali, Picasso, and Bunuel whose works had elements of clarity, primitivism, traditionalism, avant-garde, social activism/relevance, religiosity, radicalism, reverence, and/or irreverence. And there was also Gaudi whose works didn’t distinguish between the organic and the plastic and were like living buildings. And later, there was the rise of Magic Realism from writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Latin America. Incidentally, Pauline Kael said that certain images in THE WILD BUNCH reminded her of the works of Goya.
Perhaps Spain’s long history under North African rule also instilled among its people a sense of being of another race and culture even if most Spaniards tried to suppress this anxiety. The Spanish also had memories of having been the greatest power in the world as their ships had once dominated the seas and conquered the Americas, but then the greatest power in Europe became the weakest and poorest power among the major nations; and this was reflected in the New World as the power of Hispanic America was eclipsed by Anglo-America. Certain Jewish artists, especially Marc Chagall and Bob Dylan ― and perhaps Kafka ― have also been Spanish-like in their blend of high intellect and avant-garde modernism with pungent primitivism and traditionalism. Chagall, though a modernist artist, painted themes of Russian Jewish village life with reverence and affection. Dylan, though perhaps the most intellectual Rock artist, was steeped in the ‘primitive’ traditional forms of American music. If most Anglos sought to clean up folk music into a political and then a SWPL thing ― even yuppies of all stripes go to ‘folk music schools’ to learn about that stuff ― , Dylan liked the pungent stinkery that lent it a unique flavor. If Anglos eventually settled for creating the most odorless generic cheese ― the American single ― , Dylan had a nose for stinky cheese. French liked stinkery too, but being fancy and all, they had a tendency to turn everything into an endeavor of high culture. So, when French talk about stinky cheese and funny-tasting wine, they do with pomposity, flair, and expertise. It becomes a matter of snob appeal; the French have even intellectualized the movies of Jerry Lewis. In contrast, Dylan’s passion for stinkery had to do with its realness and mystery that could not be explained or sealed/marked inside a fancy bottle.
In some ways, Peckinpah could be capable of awesome discipline and authority, exhibiting the most notably positive qualities of Anglo-American stock. But in another way, he was a wild man, a rebel, and maverick, naturally dysfunctional as a member of modern civilization. Like John Huston, he had a wild side that sometimes just had to run loose and look for trouble. But if Huston’s generation mostly stuck to alcohol and cigarettes, Peckinpah had access to a whole slew of other drugs in the free-wheeling 70s, which is why Huston, though considerably older, outlived Peckinpah and made many more movies, even finishing one from a wheelchair at the end of his life. Anyway, both Huston and Peckinpah loved Mexico ― and Huston’s TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE was among the biggest influences on Peckinpah ― , and in the crazy dysfunctions in Mexico they found a richness that most Americans merely dismissed as rottenness. It’s like some men see a real woman in a whore whereas others see just a whore. It’s like some people love the taste of overripe fruit with mold and alcohol-ish odors while others only taste ROTTEN fruit. Some people are antiseptic while others are drawn to the pungency of life, and Peckinpah loved the authentic smells and grimes of Mexico.
This was evident even in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY in which a mining town was portrayed with a raunchy naturalism rare in earlier Westerns. But if the side of goodness and order finally prevail in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY ― the girl saved from sexual debauchery and the man restored of his honor ― , Peckinpah couldn’t resist the call of the wild with MAJOR DUNDEE later films. Indeed, the character of Dundee is an interesting for being drawn to both order and disorder, both collective good and individual ambition. He’s a southerner who betrayed the flavorful and colorful South ― with all its ‘eccentric’ traditions and charms ― for the upright and ‘rational’ North. He’s like an Organization Man. But another side of him, a rascally side, that wants that wants to break out for adventure and glory. He insists on order but acts on reckless impulse; he invokes the law but is sidetracked by lust. After being injured, hidden, and treated in some part of Mexico, he almost goes ‘Mexican’ in dress, drink, and womanizing. He has to be ‘saved’ and restored to his command by his men. This is something Peckinpah would have understood for, as the director, he had to be the leader/commander of the entire film crew, but as a rebel-maverick-romantic, wanted to throw everything to the winds and surrender to tequilas, chili peppers, and senoritas. Northern and Western Wasps did most to develop the New World into the Modern World, but Peckinpah found something ‘cold’ and ‘hard’ about Anglo progress, order, and modernity. Mexico, in contrast, had warmth, not only of the Sun but of the heart. In THE WILD BUNCH, after Bishop shoots Mapache, he goes after the ‘cold’ German general. In MAJOR DUNDEE, the villains ― if any such exist ― are the disciplined French soldiers who have gained control over whole swaths of Mexico. Though the South fought for slavery, the Southerner Tyreen comes across as maybe the most admirable and sympathetic character in MAJOR DUNDEE. Unlike the Northern wasps fixated on the Law or the Western wasp fixated on the gun, Southern wasps had some grace and style, the stuff of ‘warmth’ ― in the way they talked, dressed, bowed to ladies, and called on Negroes to serve the fried chicken. Take the Doc Holliday characters in TOMBSTONE(with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer) and in WYATT EARP(with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid). Though deeply flawed in character, they add color and warmth ― and element of tragedy ― to the story that might otherwise might have been lacking. Even to this day, we hear of Southern Hospitality. In DELIVERANCE, though some nasty peckerwoods bugger Ned Beatty’s character real good, the survivors are treated to a nice meal by kindly decent Southern folks who make conversation about how good the corn tastes. This may also be the appeal of Southern country music to some city folks. It may not be much artistically, but there is some real feeling in country music. Though the values may be outdated and reactionary ― or precisely for that reason ― , there is a warmth there that one doesn’t usually find in slick pop, hip jazz, or hostile rock. Consider Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” or Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man.” It makes you feel like a dumb hick, but there’s also a sense of ‘home’. (Peckinpah’s appetite for truth and its ironies were finely realized via the character of Joshua the preacher ― of the Church of the Wayfaring Stranger ― played by David Warner in THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE. Joshua is both honest and dishonest in a paradoxical way, i.e. there’s honesty in his dishonesty and vice versa. Historically, culturally, and psychologically, the honest-to-goodness truth is that humans are not and cannot be truthful in their lives. This failing isn’t simply a curse but a kind of blessing because it’s the ‘lies’ we tell ourselves ― via religion, love, hope, ego, pride, justice, purpose of existence, etc. ― that lend meaning to our lives. While we can’t live only with lies, we can’t live only with truths either. Reverend Joshua, an eccentric nomadic preacher of the church of his own making with perhaps a membership of one ― namely himself ― , is both the most honest and most dishonest person in the movie. Though a Christian preacher, he is part of no organized religion. In a way, he does with spirituality what Hogue does with the water well out in the desert. He’s a one-man show who does it his way but also, like Cable, a man searching for the ever elusive love. Because of the unorthodox nature of his church, Joshua is a free spirit who speaks more candidly about his convictions and passions than most preachers do. Unlike some of the hypocrite moralists of organized religion who preach virtue yet practice vice ― like Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, and gay pedophiles of Catholic Church ― , Joshua seeks to reconcile sexuality with sanctimony. He doesn’t hide the fact that he has women on his mind all the time. If anything, he even shows a picture of a naked woman to Hogue. He doesn’t associate sex and lust with sin and vice but instead rhapsodizes about them as God’s blessings unto mankind. He’s more into amore than mores. On that level, he’s refreshingly forthright and forgiving unto others and he expects/hopes others would be towards him. On the other hand, because his life is devoted to the impossible ― an untroubled harmonization of the holy and the horny ― , he comes up with some of the most twisted moral logic to justify his transcendent transgressions. In other words, he’s honest in his dishonesty. He justifies the spreading of women’s legs as the spreading of God’s love. There’s something funny and despicable about this but also something faintly heroic given that he’s one of the few characters in Peckinpah’s films who tries to make sense of the relation between the spirit and the flesh, as such the grand meaning of life. When he speaks about God and women, he’s not pulling something over Hogue’s eyes but sincerely grasping at some truth. In his own way, he’s a thinker and is thus a foil to Cable who is a man of gut feelings and action than contemplation. Joshua is both too clever and not clever enough for his own good . He turns his collar around to suit the situation, slipping in and out of the role of man of the cloth, but this duality isn’t necessarily a form of duplicity. Johua honestly believes there is no clear line between spiritual aspiration and fleshly desire. But given that his ‘free love’ philosophy is at odds with rest of society, he feels compelled to trick people now and then, especially cuckolded husbands. And his ego as a visionary with a special insight into God and man has made him rather precious, as if the world owes him something in return for the impartation of his wisdom. Just as Hogue feels justified in charging everyone for the water from his unique well, Joshua thinks he’s deserving of the love of women ― even married women ― in exchange for the special message he has for mankind. That he’s not just a phony is made clear at the end by his heartfelt and even magnificent eulogy at Hogue’s funeral. In his odd and ridiculous way, Joshua is a genuine visionary of the Old West, a one-of-a-kind who will be swept away with the arrival of a more organized and standardized society. Because he makes up his own rules, Joshua is both more admirable and more dubious than men of organized religion. It’s like a local restaurant can be better or worse than a franchise operation. His own interpretation of spirituality and morality makes him both more independent-minded and more opportunistic. Hogue is motivated by hatred ― vengeful grudge against former partners who betrayed him ― while Joshua is motivated by love ― lusty desire for just about any woman of the West ― , and both settle on their unique ways of going about it.)
There are inter-cultural themes in films like STRAW DOGS, KILLER ELITE, CROSS OF IRON, and THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND as well. STRAW DOGS is like a twisted version of MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. Instead of a civilized Easterner in the Wild West, it’s about a Jewish-American intellectual in some small English town. Being English, the young males of the town do have some proper manners, but it’s something of a veneer. If they’d been born two decades later, they would have grown up as ‘yobs’ in a more openly hedonistic Britain. What keeps them from acting like total louts is some semblance of social order as represented by town elders: the clan patriarch and the police chief of the town. The young men are natural thugs but have been raised with just enough modicum of manners to say ‘sir’, ‘governor’, and the like. Thus, they are not like the futuristic yobs of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE who now terrorize parts of Britain. The young men are still outwardly proper-in-behavior because authority still rests with traditional figures: old man, police chief, and town priest who oversees social affairs. But the irony is their clan elder is a tough, rough, rootin-tootin mean son of a bitch. The young men respect the older man, but the older man is something of a thug. (I suppose that’s still better than young thugs respecting nothing, which is the case with British yobs today. Respect for elders, even if elders are thugs, tend to produce more social order. Compare organized crime among Italian-Americans with wild youth crime among Negroes. Both groups steal, but elder mafia figures make sure their own community is safe and that violence is ‘controlled’ by some semblance of rules and ‘honor’. Also, families are supposed to stay together: In GOODFELLAS, Paulie tells Henry that divorce is out of the question. And in CASINO, the elder bosses will kill anyone who “fuc*s with the Jew’s wife.” It’s as if Italians understood the dangerous power of sex and instituted rules whereby, at the very least, a man would never mess with another man’s wife or else. In contrast, youth-crime-dominated black communities be just jiveass wild, and things could be just as bad in yob-controlled parts of Britain.) So, young thugs in STRAW DOGS are reined in by the old thug. Thus, there is an element of respect of tradition and authority, but it’s not necessarily righteous authority based on rule of law and/or humanist morality. It’s like among African elephants: the younger elephants behave better when a grand patriarch is around to put them in their place; otherwise, the younger elephants will do stuff like gang-raping rhinos. Though David Sumner(Dustin Hoffman) isn’t a crusader like James Stewart character is in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, both are fish out of water and men of minds than of muscle or gun. Needless to say, Peckinpah’s vision is a lot darker ― though Ford’s movie is plenty dark too. The crucial difference is the sense in Ford’s movie that there is genuine goodness in the world, something we can appreciate, mourn, and revere. It may not seem so when a character says rather cynically, “when legend becomes fact, print the legend.” But then, the statement isn’t necessarily cynical or at least not entirely cynical. As with Dr. Zaius in THE PLANET OF THE APES, the editor of the newspaper prefers to maintain the legend for idealistic reasons, to preserve the myth that unites the people of a community and strengthens their trust in lawful authority. Also, even as Ford was saying the real West was something more(and less)than the legends would have us believe, we feel an overwhelming sense of nobility in Tom Donifan(John Wayne)’s sacrifice and in James Stewart’s character and his wife’s appreciation of that sacrifice. Even if the world doesn’t know, they know, and we know that they know, and we know. Similarly, even though the old man in Kurosawa’s IKIRU died all alone, he felt good about what he accomplished and WE know how he felt. Thus, both films belong to the humanist school. Peckinpah’s humanist movie is RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, but his later films offer no finalizing truth. Humanism often shows a dangerous and depressing world but never abandons hope in man. DeSica’s UMBERTO D has one of the most depressing endings, but there is hope in OUR response to the predicament of the old man and the dog. Even if the characters cannot be saved, the film’s concern for the characters and our concern for the film makes us feel a part of the moral community. But the ending of STRAW DOGS just leaves an open question. A character says, “I don’t know my way home”, and Sumner says, “I don’t either.” And the Bunch’s ‘heroic’ destruction of Mapache’s camp resolves nothing in moral terms, as its moral dimensions were largely accidental, even absurd. In the end, try as they might, Peckinpah’s characters don’t really know why they do what they do, and we don’t either. There’s an element of vengeance, greed, personal redemption, and etc. but they don’t add up to a finalizing truth. Thus, even with the warm eulogy at the end of THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, there’s only dust and sand over where Hogue is buried after people who knew go their own separate ways. (And notice how the eulogy began in jest ― as no one expected Hogue to really die ― and ends in solemnity ― as Hogue did really die. Both his fortune and fatality were absurdly ‘accidental’.) Hogue was a colorful character but once dead, no one knows why he lived and how he died ― and that can be said of most people. He was just a part of the accident of history, of the universe. In a way, only THE GETAWAY and maybe JUNIOR BONNER could be said to have ‘happy endings’. In Peckinpah’s other films, even after the ‘bad guys’ or ‘worse guys’ have been defeated, there’s no truth for the winner/survivor(as in STRAW DOGS) or the winners too must die(as in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, THE WILD BUNCH, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, etc). And MAJOR DUNDEE has one of the most ambiguous endings in Westerns. While Dundee’s men do track down and defeat a tribe of Apaches and then survive a skirmish with the French cavalry, the final image is of one of retreat bordering on defeat, as if humanity can win battles but can never win the final war.
The inter-cultural intersects with the inter-personal in THE KILLER ELITE. On one level, it is an East vs West movie, with kung fu ninjas ― if such really existed ― fighting white guys with guns. But on another level, it’s also about personal conflict: Asian vs Asian and white vs white. James Caan’s character is betrayed by his best friend, Robert Duvall’s character. And the movie ends with a sword duel between two Asian guys for who knows what reason. Thus, conflicts exist on every level: cultural, political, and personal. And the very men who hire you could hire others to kill you. In a way, it’s the staple of countless pulpy spy thrillers, but Peckinpah spun it into his own bleak view of the world. In the end, Peckinpah seems to say he doesn’t who did what or what is what; everything’s rotten, and you should just sail away if you can.
In Ford’s film, there’s always a sense of home even when the characters are far from home. The home is in the heart, which is what the outlaws discover in THE THREE GODFATHERS. In Peckinpah’s films, there’s no sense of home even at home. Garrett feels uneasy at home with his wife. Sumner lives in a home in an English town in STRAW DOGS but never feels at home in what is another country, literally and figuratively. Billy has no home, though one could argue freedom and open frontiers are his home, but those are fading with the coming of ‘progress’, and so people like Billy who made their home in the lack of home will really be without a home. In this sense, Peckinpah’s obsession was with the psychology as with the physicality of the West.
In the Old West, one could be without a home but still search for one’s personal promised land and settle down and call it one’s home. (Though Texas has as many or even more Mexicans than California, I have this impression that Anglo-Mexican relations have been better there than in the Golden State. This seems strange since California is known for its tolerant and ‘diverse’ liberalism while Texas is politically and culturally one of the most conservative states. So, why are white/Mexican relations less hostile in the Lone Star state? Could the reason have been politico-sexual? Consider that many more white males than white females went to Texas to work as cowhands in the 19th century. Though both white men and white women moved westward, women usually tagged along the men to settle down as farmers. Texas was known for ranching, and so it might have attracted more white males than white females. The shortage of white women could have meant that Anglo males had no choice but to settle down with Mexican women, and maybe over many generations, a kind of special bond formed between Anglos and Mexicans. Consider that Billy the Kid usually had sexual relations with Mexican women. And Garrett was married to a Mexican woman and, as sheriff, popular with the Mexican community as one of their own.) Thus, in the search for home was a certain meaning to life. It’s fitting that Homer was named as he was because his greatest story, THE ODYSSEY is about a man searching his way back Home. Odysseus almost doesn’t make it home and finally makes it back only after ten years, but there was always meaning in his dream of returning. Similarly, the hope of returning to their home, the Promised Land, had long existed with the Jews. Though Jews despaired that their sacred home may be lost forever, their faith kept their dream alive. (In a way though, the Zionist narrative of returning home from exile is something of a myth. After all, there had always been Jews living in the Holy Land since ancient times. Even with the Roman-forced exile, not all Jews were kicked out, and a thriving Jewish community was allowed to exist under Muslim rule. Muslims didn’t ban Jews from the Holy Land, and one could even argue that Muslims and Jews had been co-existing peacefully for centuries, that is until the coming of European Imperialism that introduced the virus of modern Zionism under its wing. Zionism was not necessary in order for Jews to live in the Holy Land since Jews, mostly Sephardim, had already been living in the Holy Land for thousands of years. Zionism was really about the Holy Land being conquered and claimed by Europeanized Ashkenazi Jews who’d been away for many centuries. The goal of Zionism wasn’t to allow Jews to live side-by-side with Palestinians and Muslims ― since that had already been the case between Arabs and Sephardim Jews for many centuries ― but to enable Ashkenazi Jews to TAKE the land from the Palestinians and Muslims. Zionists deviously pushed events to the point where Arabs would be provoked into war and then handily defeated by the much better organized and supplied Jews. Zionist Ashkenazi Jews acted aggressively but wrapped their actions in faux-defensiveness and survivalism. Of course, Sephardim Jews, who had peacefully co-existed alongside Arabs/Muslims for centuries, sided with Ashkenazi Jews for the sake of Jewish Supremacy just as Eastern or Ost-Germans, who’d peacefully co-existed with Poles and other non-Germans for centuries, sided with Nazi German occupiers during WWII. If your side can have ALL the power, the temptation is too difficult to resist. We often hear that Tutsis and Hutus had been co-existing peacefully for centuries, but then the modern ideology of ‘racism’ introduced by Belgians created divisions that led to horrible violence. Thus, we are told that the real blame should go to Europeans. If so, why hasn’t a similar case been made against Zionism, i.e. Arab Muslims/Christians and Sephardim Jews had been famously living side by side in peace for many centuries, but then the modern racist-imperialist ideology of Zionism came along and destroyed that peace and led to horrible violence that still troubles the region to this day? And why isn’t Lincoln and the North blamed for the messing up the peaceful co-existence between Southern whites and blacks? Just as Tutsi elites and slave-masters had ‘peacefully co-existed’ with Hutu servants and slaves for many centuries, white Southerners and blacks had been living peacefully in the South. Sure, the racial relation wasn’t equal in the South, but then, that was never the case between Tutsis and Hutus either. The only rule in modern political morality as controlled by Jews is white gentiles must be blamed for all ills.) Of course, it’s interesting because there’s a dual narrative about the Promised Land in the Jewish narrative (triple narrative if we include the Babylonian Exile, and quadruple narrative if we include the story of Joseph and his brothers’ entry into Egypt). In the first narrative, Jews conquer, lay claim, and settle into their Promised Land. But they lose it, and their sacred home lives on a myth. But then, a people can lose something even if they maintain control over it. White people, via the Manifest Destiny, saw the Wild West as their promised land and conquered it. White people had absolute control over it as Peckinpah came of age. But the rapidity of change meant that the Old West was no more and replaced by the new modern West; the Old West came and went too fast, but that sudden loss increased its mythic appeal. So, in a way, the promised land of the Old West was also lost as far as Peckinpah was concerned. Even though white people still had possession of it, it just became like the rest of America and succumbed to modernity. If the Zionist idea of regaining the Promised Land was taking the land from the Palestinians and creating a nation-state, Peckinpah’s idea of regaining the promised land of the Old West was through the mythology of movies; and outlaws were useful in this context. If Zionism needed tough Jews to terrorize and mow down Palestinians in order to grab the land, Peckinpah imagined the retaking of the lost West by having outlaws terrorize modernizing forces of Law & Order. Of course, this didn’t mean Peckinpah wanted criminals to terrorize people in California and other parts of the West. But in the world of the imagination, Peckinpah found outlaws to be useful agents against the forces of Progress hellbent on making the West like the rest of the country. Of course, there was really no one to blame. Progress was inevitable, and there was something childish about Peckinpah’s romanticism. But psychologically, the anticipation of something can be more precious than the thing itself. Thus, looking forward to Christmas is more magical than the actual day. Looking forward to the wedding is more special than the actual wedding itself. Searching for home can be more special than having a home. When the West was still wild, having no home meant you were home everywhere. Your home wasn’t simply this here spot as opposed to that there spot. And if you didn’t like your spot, you could just load your things in a wagon or boat(as Sheriff Baker says he’s gonna do) and go look for another place. But once the West was settled and ‘closed’ and fences went up, you had to find a specific place to call your home in the West and that was your place, and that was that. You had a home but you lost the psychological hope of finding one’s promised land. Though Peckinpah’s romanticism may seem ludicrous in today’s social and demographic context, he grew up at a time when the world around him still had the flavor of the Old West. Of course, nowadays, the Southwest is just turning into Greater Mexico and ruled by globalist Jews who own the Spanish-language media.
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID wanders back and forth between clarity and confusion, subtlety and obviousness(and worst of all, OBVIOUS SUBTLETY, the worst of both worlds). It’s not entirely fair to compare it with THE WILD BUNCH, but it sometimes fails on its own terms. The tone, intended as somber, elegiac, and contemplative, sometimes hovers like a stale hangover. THE WILD BUNCH is about resistance whereas PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is about resignation. Both Pike Bishop and Pat Garrett are faced with the crisis of aging. Outlawry, defined by constant violence and movement, is simply not an old man’s livelihood. If crime it must be, old men are better suited for organized crime, and ironically enough, the Law of the West, as presented in the film, has some of the hallmarks of organized crime. As the territories are developing into ‘civilization’, the Law functions more as a weapon of power than the impersonal arm of justice. The Law can be bent, bought, rewritten. Establishment of the Law as justice is to come later once the dust has settled, but the dust must be stirred up before it settles, and it seeps into the lives of everyone. As embodied by the figure of Pat Garrett himself ― outlaw turned sheriff ― , the twilight world between the fading Old West and the looming New West offers no clear boundaries between good and bad, between law and criminal, between young and old.
Pike Bishop is faced with a similar crisis but with an intense pride that resists his aging body and flagging spirit ― as when he re-injures his leg but musters every last ounce of energy to mount the horse and reclaim his position as leader. What he says about Harrigan ― that some people can never admit they’re wrong ― also applies to himself, and deep down inside, he knows it but can’t admit it since his carelessness got Thorton captured. Bishop can’t face his own demons, and so he always on the move, always looking for the next big score(as a fountain of youth). In some ways, Bishop knows he can’t be an outlaw for much longer, at least not as leader. He could let young guys take over and tag along ― like Old Man Sykes ― , but he has too much pride to just be a hanger-on. As much as he resists the reality of aging, he also dreams of one big score so he could settle down. The deal he cuts with Mapache offers him the best of both worlds. If everything goes well, he’ll have proven his virility and mastery as outlaw; but he’ll also have enough money to buy some land and retire. Due to the nature of his crimes, he cannot settle down like Garrett. Garrett may have rustled some cattle and done some dubious things, but he probably was nothing like the members of the Bunch: cold-blooded killers who even pull a heist on the U.S. military. One senses Garrett always moved in and out of the law ― like the Randolph Scott character in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY ― but was committed to being a full-time criminal. And this is why he’s acceptable to both Billy and the governor/Chisum/ranchers. He’s like a bridge between the two worlds. Garrett knows that the outlaws are not all bad, and he knows the Law isn’t all good. Before he took on the role of sheriff, one could envision him as a negotiator among various sides ― between outlaw and the Law, between outlaw and outlaw, between Law and Law ― , but it being the Old West, words go only so far. When words don’t get the meaning across, bullets must do the talking. In the opening scene, Garrett tries to negotiate a deal with Billy: Billy can live and remain free if he goes to Mexico. But there’s too much pride hanging on both of them. Though Garrett asks nicely, he makes it clear that he means business. Billy has his pride too, and he doesn’t like to be told what to do, even by a friend who means well. They don’t wanna fight one another but sense they may have to. In a way, they’re like the gladiators in SPARTACUS, as when Spartacus(Kirk Douglas) has no choice but to fight the Giant Negro(Woody Strode); both cannot live; one must live, one must die according to the powers-that-be. Thus, they are both reluctant killers, though the greater moral burden is on Garrett’s shoulders ― at least on the personal level ― since he’s the one who ‘betrays’ a friend out of self-interest. Garrett feels like the hunter in SNOW WHITE. He’s been ordered to kill by a superior, but his personal conscience fills him with doubt. He knows he has to do it but puts it off as long as he can. And maybe the reason he hires another gunman is in the hope that someone else will do the killing, but deep down inside, he knows it will most likely come down to himself and Billy. Unlike Pike Bishop, Garrett seems resigned, however reluctantly, to his fate. Bishop has no long-term plan(except may be a vague one), and he never knows what will happen next or what he’ll do next. Until the moment he goes off to save Angel, he didn’t know he’d do it. He didn’t know how Mapache would react to his request. He didn’t know how he would react to Mapache’s reaction. THE WILD BUNCH presents a series of wild cards. It’s like a series of playoffs leading to the championship game where no one knows what’s going to happen and who’s going to win next. PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is more like a boxer dreading to fight someone for personal reasons. Take Larry Holmes vs Muhammad Ali. (Though Ali was the older man, he acted the youthful clown-rebel while Holmes played the maturer athlete ― at least relatively within the context of the sport.) Holmes knew he could beat Ali but never wanted to fight him because Ali had recruited him as sparring partner and been generous to him. The last man Holmes wanted to beat and humiliate before the world was Ali, but he had no choice but to do it. He had to destroy a man he’d looked up to like an old brother. Marciano also didn’t feel good about defeating the faded Joe Louis. In boxing, it’s usually younger guys destroying their older heroes, so in terms of age, it’s the reverse of what happens in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, but the emotional dynamic is similar. The last person Garrett wants to hunt down and kill is Billy, but he has to do it. Interestingly enough, there’s a duality to Billy. He is a young man but also represents the Old West. In resisting change and progress, he is something of an anarcho-conservative. And though Garrett chooses to grow old with the West, the West is growing young as it grows old, i.e. the new ways are replacing the old ways. As Dylan illustrated in the song “My Back Pages” ― “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” ― such is the paradox of progressive-historical-time. Some civilizations, like those of Egyptian, Byzantine, Hindu, and Chinese, reached their peaks and remained more or less the same, gradually aging and stagnating, whereas historical time as developed by the modern West, in its commitment to progress and innovation, grows younger as it grows older. So, Garrett is somewhat deluded when he ways, “this land is growing old and I intend to grow old with it.” He won’t be an old man growing older in an aging land but an old man growing old in a world growing younger. Thus, there’s a certain logic his being getting killed by Poe, a younger man(who ironically has grown old by the time he kills Garrett). Garrett killed a younger man, Billy, to grow old in an old land growing older, but he is, in turn, killed by a younger man growing older in a new order growing younger.
Billy and Garrett, to the end of their lives, do have one in common: the desire for what they need but not much more than that. Billy likes money, freedom, and women, but he doesn’t want power over the territory because he has no need for it to be happy. The aging Garrett also has his needs, but what’s sufficient for Billy and his gang is no longer sufficient for him. Though Garrett enjoys the company of important men, he doesn’t really want to be one of them ― as Poe does. He wants security, comfort, and respect, but he’s not after Power. Thus, both Billy and Garrett are need-driven than not ambition-driven. They are predators that would rather relax once their bellies are full. So, even though Billy is a thief, he’s a thief-of-need than thief-of-‘greed’(though, personally, I find such moral logic despicable since stealing is stealing). For a man like Chisum, it’s not enough to have just what he needs for survival and/or comfort. Billy and Garrett have pride as individuals; Chisum has pride as a leader of men, as master of the land. And yet, we admiring Chisum to a degree because he makes it clear that he’s a self-made man, someone who paid his dues, someone of intelligence and ability as well as ruthlessness and ambition. He’s not just some well-connected, money-changing, and slick son of a bitch but a man who knows the weight of a gun in his hand. And though his men commit a terrible atrocity against Paco, it was probably not a direct order from Chisum. Chisum probably ordered his hired men to patrol the territory, but the men, being of low character, enjoy torturing, raping, and plundering. It’s like Deke Thorton, try as he might, cannot make his ‘egg-sucking’ bunch of bounty hunters to act like ‘real men’ in THE WILD BUNCH.
In this sense, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID have something in common. It’s about the conflict between what-one-needs and what-one-wants. A man doesn’t need too much to live, but his ego may want much more, especially in the Wild West that was filled with so many opportunities. There lies the paradox of American freedom. Based on the notion of ‘all men are created equal’ and individual rights, a generous spirit of equality and freedom prevails. But freedom and equal rights means some clever-creative-energetic-enterprising individuals will get rich fast and rise high, and their success feeds envy and resentment among men who might otherwise might have been satisfied with ‘need’ than ‘greed’. In Old Europe, privilege was limited to a small class, and there was resentment toward that class. But since most people had little chance of making it rich, they shared a common sense of being ‘equally poor’. Thus, even as a European might envy the nobleman, he didn’t necessarily envy his neighbor; they were in the same boat. But in America, your neighbor could become very rich by ranching, gold-panning, selling goods, dealing in real estate, selling liquor, investing, and etc. The notion of rags-to-riches made everyone feel empowered ― as in “maybe I or at least my children could become rich too” ― , but it also made everyone feel dis-empowered because many people, even with all the equal rights and freedoms, remained poor while their next-door neighbor got rich, even fabulously rich. Envy of someone far away tends to be weak, but envy of someone near is strong. (To be sure, there are more than one kind of wealth. There’s wealth of owning of actual things, wealth of owning lots of money, and ‘wealth’ of feeling rich through ‘symbolic riches’. The last kind isn’t real wealth or is, at best, psychological wealth. ‘Symbolic riches’ are generally opiates for the dumb poor but not always. A jigger-jiver in a ghetto may be poor, but as long as he owns/displays symbols of vulgar wealth ― bling bling, gold rings, Air Jordans, and other such slick items ― , he may feel rich by association/identification, i.e. since millionaire rappers seem to dress like that, you feel rich too if you imitate them in dress and style. But even among the educated middle class, ‘symbolic riches’ have their function, as when a lesser yuppie buys certain items favored by higher yuppie to feel that he or she too is part of the haute club. Thus, some people buy luxury items ― even on credit ― to feel richer than they really are, which is rather pathetic if you ask me. It’d be better if we got together, pulled out the guillotines, and robbed the rich liberals.) Thus, envy and vanity have been great driving forces in American life. Though we like to call it self-improvement and individual ambition, a lot of it’s driven by resentment and anxiety. And this is why the Old West could be so dangerous, especially among Anglo-Americans.
Though Mexico was filled with violence of all sorts, most Mexicans understood that they were born poor and meant to be poor. Mexico was mostly controlled and owned by the rich elites, and that was that. Poor folks stayed close to the earth and toiled. And so, there was little enterprise because there was little envy; if your neighbor is some poor guy eating tortilla and beans and if you’re eating tortilla and beans, and if both of you think that’s how it’s always gonna be, you may be poor but resigned to how things are. But among Anglo-Americans, there was a sense that one could make something of oneself and become rich ― an a sense that those around you were doing better than yourself, thereby motivating you to try harder yourself out of competitive resentment. Even if most people didn’t strike it rich, the fact is you heard stories of someone who went West and found gold, laid claim to lots of land, or made big bucks. And that made you want some too. Now, some Americans were content with ‘enough’, but some wanted more and more. They were not content with ‘enough’ and with ‘need’. They heard of some rags-to-riches story where someone became rich, and they were gonna get some too. Indeed, the rise of Mexican illegal immigration may also have been fed by envy. Just as the stories of the 49ers made many people wanna go to California and dig/pan for gold themselves, modern Mexicans ― via modern communications and travel ― might have heard stories of how someone in their community went to El Norte and made some big money(relatively speaking); and some of the hombres returned to the hometown with Yankee dinero and bought a big home, making the locals who stayed behind envious. When everyone was poor in the community, everyone accepted it as the fact of life. But when you hear that some taco-head in your town went to El Norte, makes good money, and sends ‘big money’ back to his family, you want some action too. And if you were a pregnant Mexican woman long ago, you were just a pregnant Mexican woman. But if you hear that some pregnant women in your town went up north and got all sorts of free benefits, you wanna join the migration too. Moreover, the Mexican government has been spreading the propaganda-of-envy among their folks, telling them, “mira, some hombres go el norte y make mucho dinero, so porque usted not do it too?”
American character was formed by the melding of two contradictory values/forces, of ‘need’ and ‘greed’. There is something in the Protestant value-system that strongly favors need and looks down on ostentatiousness. Benjamin Franklin, though a Francophile and admiring of fancy Continental culture, was also a true believer in the virtues of thriftiness. Some might call this ‘drab’, but Protestants saw it as virtuous. Men should dress properly but not to show off or to be fancy. A woman should be presentable but not vain like Evita Peron or Catherine the Great. A person’s true worth was his soul, his character, and his faith, therefore, ostentatiousness and excessive ornamentalism were seen as masks to cover up the moral emptiness, shallowness, and/or corruption ― like flowery deodorant sprays mask the smell of a malodorous room. Worse, showiness could, in and of itself, be a sin of vanity and pride. The Anglo-American virtue was to take what you need, appreciate it, thank the Lord, and be thrifty. And such values might have well-served the populations of Northern Europe had they remained there. But then came the New World. Suddenly, the Anglo character was face-to-face with the richest land the world had ever known. There were endless acreage of arable land, forests to chop down, minerals, oils, fishes, beaver pelts, and etc. to be found and developed on this land. Thus, the Anglo-American character was confronted with a great contradiction: the need to be basic, spartan, sober, and thrifty AND the opportunity to go hog-wild, grow super-rich(indeed richer even than all the kings and noblemen of Europe put together), run wild and free, and go nutsoid. In this light, it’s no wonder that American colleges are what they are: combination of monasticism and fraternity-ism. Modeled on elitist European colleges ― especially the 19th Germanic model ― , American universities are leading centers of learning and intellectual pursuits. They are also known as ‘party schools’. Some fraternity parties are like Wild West saloons ― and some sorority houses can be plenty wild too, like a brothel of hussies. The American mythology begins with pilgrims arriving on the land to be faithful servants of God, taking from the land only what they need, trying to live peacefully with Indians, and working and praying. Though the business class soon arrived in the New World and had bigger ideas than the Puritans/Pilgrims did, they too were of the Protestant Work Ethic. They knew the New World would avail them with limitless opportunities, but they prayed a lot and reminded themselves that they must make sure that riches must not go to their heads and make them all show-offy and pompous. And even the lesser religious people ― like the Founding Fathers ― believed that serious men must be sober and committed to serious endeavors. Even so, the Anglos arriving in America faced a great temptation. It was like a priggish man with Victorian values being let loose on an island full of hot buxom babes. He wants to retain his virtue but can’t help wanting to bang every chick. What is he to do? The American way was to bang all the chicks but also to maintain the cult of sobriety and virtue, and this was one of the main hypocrisies at the core of Anglo-American history that Jews would attack later. According to Jews, Anglo-Americans came and saw all the good stuff, went hog-wild, enjoyed themselves to the full with their greed and rapaciousness... all the while pretending to be virtuous, thrifty, and decent ― but, to an extent, this was a case of Jews recognizing their own hypocrisies and projecting them onto Anglo-Americans. (Jews also have their moral and spiritual virtues/vanities but couldn’t resist the opportunity for wanton piggery when they smelled an opportunity to make big bucks, and the smell of opportunity was greater in America than anywhere else. If Jews can point to Anglo-American hypocrisies, why can’t Wasps accuse Jews of the same? Well, there’s the thing with the Holocaust Cult, and if you accuse Jews of their hypocrisies, you get called an ‘anti-Semite’. So, Jews can say Anglo-Americans have been a greedy, murderous, genocidal, and oppressive people, but one cannot say the same thing for Jews even if Jews were no different. Because ‘antisemitic stereotypes’ are said to be ‘venomous’, ‘odious’, ‘noxious’, ‘rabid’, and ‘virulent’, Jews are protected from any charges against them no matter how true. There’s a kind of ‘affirmative action’ working here, i.e. since Jews have been charged of being wicked for so long, it’s time they got a break, especially after the Holocaust. And given the magnitude of that horror, we wanna be nice, but the level of Jewish power, venality, and mendacity makes it dangerous for gentiles not to criticize Jews. In one important way, Jewish accusations against Anglo-Americans are unwarranted. While it’s true that Anglo-Americans did a lot of unpleasant, cruel, and terrible stuff ― especially to American Indians, Negroes, some Mexicans, and some Chinese ― , the fact is SOMEONE had to do the ‘dirty work’ to make North America safe and open for democracy, free enterprise, modernity, and etc. If Wasp-Americans hadn’t done the ‘dirty work’, Jews wouldn’t have been able to succeed in America with relatively cleaner hands. Suppose Jews had arrived first in America and had to fight and kill Indians, use black labor to plant cotton, take land from Mexicans, and hire Chinese to build railroads. Jews would have done some terrible stuff, but they would have made it possible for other people to arrive later to settle and make their lives in a new civilization. Founding and building a nation is tough, as Jews must surely know from their experience in Israel. There, Jews had to do the ‘dirty work’ of driving out Palestinians and fight wars with neighbors. It’s so easy for Jews to arrive in other people’s nations and henpeck the native population for all their historical sins. That is the mind-set of parasitic leeches. If Jews believe that Anglo-Americans committed unpardonable sins in the creation of a new nation, then they should never have come here to take advantage of it since they would be collaborators and profiteers of what Anglo-Americans had made possible over the bones, sweat, blood, and toil of so many people. But notice how Jews wanna dump all the blame on Anglo-Americans while promoting themselves as the True Immigrant Americans who came to redeem this nation from Wasp ‘racism’. And it’s sad that so many Wasps have fallen for this dirty Jewish trick. But then, Jews did the same in South Africa. No one forced Jews to go to South Africa. Jews went there because Anglos and Dutch made that part of Africa safe and lucrative for Jews to go and do business ― especially in diamonds ― , and Jews became among the richest people in South Africa and remain so to this day. But again, notice how Jews waited for whites to do the ‘dirty work’ while they came later and exploited opportunities made possible by the white man. But were Jews ever appreciative? No. Even as they benefitted from Apartheid ― and from white Afrikaner government’s close ties with Zionist and race-ist Israel ― , Jews did everything in their power to accuse, blame, and attack whites of ‘racism’. This is how Jews operate; this is what Jews are. A curse upon the white race. Jews are like this because of a certain character rooted in their Semitic haggly gaggly waggly genes. It’s not just cultural but genetic. Just look at the Jewish character in the movie BROADCAST NEWS. Jews are born with such personalities, which you can find in Noam Chomsky, Alan Dershowitz, David Horowitz, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Rahm Emanuel, Michael Savage, Howard Stern, Woody Allen, Bobby Fischer, Sarah Silverman, Elena Kagan, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, and etc. They are a bitter, resentful, self-righteous, devious, venal, cunning, contemptuous, greedy, holier-than-thou, venomous, rabid, and virulent people. Anglo-Americans lost to Jews not only because of their lower intelligence but because their straightness couldn’t fend off Jewish curviness, because Wasps were mostly of one personality type while Jews were of several. We all know of the Northern European personality. Jewish personality has a creative and calculative edge because it’s the molding together of Semitic and European traits. Like Anglos, Jews have a culture of sobriety, diligence, depth, and respectability. But they also retain the Semitic traits of haggly-gaggly-waggliness, oiliness, cut-throat-ness, and fiendishness. A Jew is like a mixture of Wasp and Arab, and that may explain why Steve Jobs was such a remarkable figure. If you wanna create a Jew out of the blue, take a high IQ Anglo and a high IQ Arab, and make them have a kid. It was that mix of Wasp concentration and seriousness AND Semitic deviousness and cunning that made Jobs beat out all the competition; he even beat a whole bunch of real Jews. He was a genetic melding of Wasp hardware and Semitic software.)
The great but frustrating thing about Anglo-Americans was they seemed to be less greedy than most people but making more money. Due to Protestant Work Ethic, Anglo-Americans were less likely to show off their wealth ― like, for example, the Latin American rich or even the Chinese rich with their silk, gold, and porcelain figurines. How could a people who didn’t seem so money-obsessed(at least outwardly)be making more money? One answer is found in the Ant-and-Grasshopper story. Ant works and works while grasshopper lives for pleasure, but in the end, the ants have it better than the grasshopper. A lot of people wanna be rich and don’t wanna have to work. But if you choose fun over work, you won’t be rich. If you choose work over fun, you will have money but won’t have much fun. The anxiety of class mobility is rooted in the knowledge that hard work may lead to riches but then riches may lead to dissipation and decline ― especially in the children of the rich. The very thing one worked so hard to attain serves as the agent of one’s or one’s children’s downfall. The trick then has been for the ant to work hard to gain riches but keep on grinding on as an ant than shift into grasshopper gear. This is problematic for many rich people and especially their children since the whole point of being rich is to show off and have a good time. What’s the point of working to be rich if one cannot live it up like a king or queen? This is where the rich ant has to grow up psychologically; he must realize that there are other kinds of pleasure than having good times and showing off fancy stuff. He must learn to find pleasure in power and status; there is pleasure to be found in winning in the game of making more money. Thus, work becomes pleasurable in its own right as the stoker of one’s Will to Power.
The Wild West was where the Anglo-American character met its greatest challenge. In those vast territories, it was as if the white man could finally run free and go hog-wild ― and he sure was tempted to do so. But another side of the Anglo-American character told him to watch himself, not just plunder the land for quick gain and short-term pleasures but to build towns with churches, court houses, and schools where kids could learn how to read and write and be good folks. And this dichotomy could be seen in Peckinpah himself. He came from a successful family driven by ambition. But Peckinpah once told a story of his grandfather who, realizing his eye sight was failing, chose never to hunt again. Hunting and killing for food was one thing, but it was wrong to injure an animal and cause it undue pain. Only people with good eye-sight should go hunting and should only kill what is to be eaten. One shouldn’t kill just to kill, which was like sinning against what was provided to man by God. One part of Peckinpah loved guns and shooting, but another part of him told him he must kill animals for ‘need’, not for ‘greed’ ― in this case, the greed of macho ego that just wants to shoot anything for the thrill of it. (Similarly, we wanna see the men in THE WILD BUNCH use the machine gun but for a worthy or justifiable cause than just for the hell of it. We want the thrill of nihilism and destruction but wrapped in some semblance of constructive moral justification. This was the whole point of Eastwood’s UNFORGIVEN. Its main characters want the reward money but justify their ‘greed’ with an exaggerated and unconvincing sense of moral outrage. And the movie tricks us into feeling the same way. After all, we want the story to end with a classic Western shoot-out that justifies our thirst of blood, and the script offers it to us by having the Gene Hackman character torture and kill the Noble Negro character played by Morgan Freeman. Thus, moral ambiguity conveniently goes out the window, and the audience roots for Eastwood the ‘anti-racist’ moderate Republican to blast away Hackman-as-Pat-Buchanan of the West. Pat Buchanan, clueless as usual about movies, thought the film was an endorsement of vigilante justice. Anyway, UNFORGIVEN allowed Eastwood to have it both ways. On the one hand, it is a liberal Western where a reformed white guy kills a nasty ‘racist’ and ‘misogynist’ white guy. But in another way, it exposed moralism as an all-too-easy means by which the audience justifies its own bloodthirstiness. After all, liberal viewers who’d been keen to the irony of three men hiding behind morality to kill other men for money were suddenly rooting for Eastwood’s character to just blow away ‘bad guys’ without giving it a second thought. Since the Hackman character had committed the sin of ‘racism’ by killing a Noble Negro, liberal audience members felt fully justified in calling for his blood. They became just like the hookers who hired gunmen out of bloody vengeance. Since ‘one of their own’ ― the iconic Noble Negro ― to the liberal community was killed by the Hackman character, the latter became utterly unforgivable even to progressives who generally oppose something like the death penalty, and so they were hootin’ and hollerin’ when the Eastwood character finally blasted away at the ‘evil’ sheriff. The script as directed by Eastwood slyly understood and exposed the liberal hypocrisy where such considerations as irony, complexity, and ambiguity all went out the window when certain tropes came into play. So, even as liberals flatter themselves that they are different from conservatives because they don’t see the world in terms of us-versus-them due to greater capacity for intellect and empathy, they become mindless drones cheering for one side against the other when it comes to issues of ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, and ‘antisemitism’. Take the New Republic magazine that takes great pride in its multi-faceted liberal intelligence but shifts into simple-minded b/w mode when it comes to issues of ‘gay rights’ and Zionism.) In the conquest of the Wild West, some white man saw as their duty not only to settle the land but to take care of it a gift given them by God. But other whites just couldn’t help going hog-wild. They saw countless bisons and other animals all around and figured on shooting as many as possible and more. Some people killed bisons not for food or even for pelts but just for fun. And so, the bison population went from an estimated 20 million to just several hundreds or thousands in late 19th century.
The Need vs. Greed dichotomy is a fixture of many movies and indeed has long roots in the history of storytelling. In CHINATOWN, the villain is Noah Cross(John Huston)who’s into greed; he ‘s hungry for power, riches, and control far beyond his needs. In contrast, the Jack Nicholson, though certainly not averse to money, lives for the pleasure of living. Money is nice because it makes life easy, but money is not his obsession. He’s not a Scrooge. Similarly, YOJIMBO’s character ‘Sanjuro’(Toshiro Mifune) takes what he needs but has no desire for more. And the blind swordsman Zatoichi(Shintaru Katsu)of some twenty six movies gambles to earn just enough for food, drink, and lodging. So, stories have often favored characters who aren’t slaves to money; slaves to money are usually the bad guys who want us to be the slaves of them.
And even among the characters of ‘greed’, stories tend to be rather sympathetic with those of limited ambitions. Consider MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER directed by Robert Altman, which has two business people of some ambition. McCabe(Warrren Beatty)wants to be the dominant businessman of a mining village, and Mrs. Miller proposes a plan to manage a successful whorehouse. But even as they have a taste for money, they aren’t willing to spill blood over it. They also have a soft spot for one another and for people of the town. McCabe is a hustler who acts big and even something of a rascal but he’s not a scoundrel. And there’s something rather endearingly naive about him despite the cynicism and bluster. McCabe and Miller are also romantics and dreamers. McCabe falls in love with ‘Mrs. Miller’ and speaks his own kind of ‘poetry’, and in a way, his decision to go up against the three hired killers grew out of his personal pride tied to his love for Mrs. Miller. She wants him to flee and live, but he doesn’t want her to think of him as a coward who ran off to save his own skin. In a gun fight that is at once absurdly funny, suspenseful, and beautiful, McCabe reveals the full range of his character from cowardly clown to romantic hero. Just as McCabe is no natural poet but tried to be poetic in his love for Mrs. Miller, he’s no hero but tries to be some kind of hero. And Mrs. Miller, despite her no-nonsense exterior of nickels and dimes, privately lives in a world of dime novels and pipe dreams. McCabe and Miller, as business people with the human faces and feelings, are contrasted with faceless forces of big business that sends its agents to scour western towns to buy up properties behind the veiled threat of the gun. Big Business, according to the film, is like organized crime: it makes you an offer you can’t refuse.
Stories also distinguish between hands-on businessmen who do their own work and big businessmen who use the levers of banks, government, and hired guns. We grow fond of the Jason Robards character in THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE. Though uncouth and abrasive, he creates something out of the desert with his own hands. In ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, the relatively honest work of the murdered family is contrasted with the ruthless ways of railroad tycoons and their hired killers. In some ways, this dichotomy of Need vs Greed is extended even into the world of crime, which has always struck me as morally offensive as well as dubious. BONNIE AND CLYDE, for instance, makes the case that the killer duo is, in some ways, better than the banks that they rob because they do their own dirty work, risk their own lives, and steal only enough to have a good time(but never to control the world). Similarly, we are supposed to think better of the gang in THE WILD BUNCH because they put their own lives on the line and steal only so much to have some good time(before they have to steal again). In contrast, railroad men supposedly want to own and control all of the West, and Mapache and his army rob everyone under the guise of ‘law and order’ in Mexico. Thus, criminals, even as they are ‘bad men’, are supposedly better than Big Business because they are more honest about what they are. Big Business, in contrast, is allegedly even ‘greedier’ than criminals but manipulate laws and use politics to eat the entire pie. When we consider how Jewish elites have gained control of, exploited, and manipulated laws, information, politicians, and finance to essentially rob most of us of our liberty, rights, wealth, and control over our own lives and nation, it is tempting to agree with the visions of Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah, but their films are based on a moral fallacy. As an old saying goes, “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Just because Jewish elites control and abuse the laws to rob us and rake it in ― Las Vegas or Wall Street, which today, are essentially the same thing ― , control government to undermine the Constitution and steer US foreign policy into Wars for Israel, and manipulate the media and academia to force garbage like ‘gay marriage’ on us in order to demoralize and corrupt the goy population, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Negro thugs rampaging around cities or illegal alien gangs indulging in all sorts of crimes along border towns are any better. While Jews are the most powerful and influential people in America, the fact is a person has a much greater chance of getting killed by a Negro thug than by a Jewish Wall Street con-man. (To be sure, Negro thugs and Illegal alien gangs in the US wouldn’t be so ‘empowered’ if not for liberal Jewish influence in law, media, and government. Notice how Jews essentially aid and abet black-on-white crime not only by refusing to report most such stories but by manipulating ‘white guilt’ to browbeat white people from addressing the problem, sounding the alarm, and calling for racial solidarity against black viciousness.)
Mythic narratives prefer the active hero over the tyrannical hoarder. Alberich in NIBELUNGEN(at least in the Wagner version) is especially detestable not only because he’s short, ugly, and hairy but because he steals the Rheingold and stashes it to gain control over the world. Ugly, disgusting, and runty, he knows he cannot win respect, women, and glory as a proud warrior. But he’s not willing to accept his fate as an ugly loser and instead forges his resentment into an ambition of world conquest. In essence, Wagner put his finger on the essence of the Jewish Way. The short, ugly, and hairy Jew, unable to compete with the ‘Aryan’ Germans as Real Men, sought to use their superior wit, cunning, and weasel-lust to gain control over the goy world. The Alberich Complex is alive and well, which may seem odd since America has been hospitable to Jews, and Jews are by far the most powerful group in America. But ‘enough’ is never enough for Jews. Jews always have to play for more money, more power, and more control. This is one reason why Anglos lost to Jews. At some point, Anglos felt, “we have enough” and eased their ambition. For Jews, there is only lust for more and more. But Jews learned that one mustn’t be officially ‘greedy’. This is why most Jews reject Ayn Randianism. Not because they are full of altruism ― indeed powerful Jews practice an Ayn Randianism more extreme than the one preached by Rand herself ― but because they see the advantages of altruism as an official policy. If Jews honestly said they are in it for ‘greed’, people would come to resent them. But if Jews keep raking it in but make noise about ‘social justice’ and ‘equality’, goy dummies think Jews should own even more wealth and power since Jews are all about working hard for equality. Thus, Jews know how to launder money through morality. If anyone has wondered why super-rich scum like George Soros funds leftist causes, it’s because his ilk uses ideology as insurance for its insatiable greed.
In THE ILIAD, the heroes, flawed as they may be, come across as better than the scheming Agamemnon who’s out for riches and power. There’s something pure about the passion for love or passion for war ― and the willingness to die for either ― , but schemers who use war for personal ambition(especially if they make others do most of the fighting)strike us as ignoble. Similarly, the most hateful character in PATHS OF GLORY is the manipulative general(Adolphe Menjou) who plays everyone like pieces on a chessboard to serve his own ambition. (But given Kubrick’s devious chess-obsessed nature, he probably identified with the general as much as he detested him.) And Tyrell(Joe Turkel) in BLADE RUNNER is the bigger villain than Batty(Rutger Hauer). Batty may be deranged, but his main interest is to live(as his life cycle is drawing to a close); there’s an urgency at the core of his exercise of ruthless power. Tyrell, in contrast, seems more heartless than ruthless. He’s so obsessed with more power and more riches that there is no ‘need’ in his vocabulary. He has everything he needs, and so he’s entirely fixated on greed. On the other hand, he’s not as despicable as Alberich, Shylock, or Scrooge because he is a visionary, indeed one of the greatest in the world. He’s for money and power but NOT ONLY for money and power; he has a dream of creating and controlling beings that are ‘more human than human’. He creates gods and owns them as slaves. To be able to mass manufacture near-perfect god-like warriors and to control their fates as the slave-master of the gods must be one hell of a thrill. Also, unlike other tycoons of greed who seek to eradicate all elements of risk in pursuit of total control and power, there is an element of the gambler in Tyrell, which makes his ‘greed’ more romantic in nature. There is great danger in creating artificial beings equal to him in intelligence ― especially if they’re to be used as slaves ― , but that’s what Tyrell does. Though frightened when Batty comes for a visit as an uninvited guest, a corner of Tyrell’s psyche may have expected such a day might come. Tyrell likes a good challenge. He loves games like chess. He likes to feel tested. Thus, creating god-hero-slaves and then setting up a security system to keep himself safe from their infiltration/attack is part of the game he plays. He resides in an impregnable tower but creates beings that might just be smart, strong, and creative enough to enter his lair. Even so, there’s something ‘less honest’ about the kind of power employed by men-of-greed like Tyrell and Noah Cross(of CHINATOWN). They ‘hire their killings’, as Thorton says of Harrigan in THE WILD BUNCH. Bishop, though a robber-killer, does his own killing; he puts his own neck on the line. Harrigan and the ‘railroad men’, in contrast, hire others to do their killings and hide behind the law to legitimize their own acts of legalized robbery.
In a way, the Cult of Greed is the corruption of Reason. Prior to the rise of civilization, tribal warriors ruled over various social orders(or disorders). Brawn mattered most. But as elders gained control over younger men, things like customs, hierarchy, respect, and experience came to matter more, and brawny young men had to obey the weaker older men(who monopolized social and spiritual respect). It went from muscle power to beard power(which is why clergies went for hairiness, with long hair signifying respect earned through the passage of time). Muscle power could be plenty brutal and cruel, but it wasn’t necessarily corrupt. There is a certain animal purity about head-bashing and butt-kicking. It’s like lions attack their prey when they’re hungry and have a good eat. Once their bellies are full, they take it easy and rest until they feel hungry and go hunting again. Lions are brutish and cruel but motivated by need. Their bellies need food when they’re hungry and so they hunt, but once they’ve had their fill, they take it easy and don’t keep killing. In DANCES WITH WOLVES, the American Indians are presented as a people of need in contrast to whites, a people of greed. Indians hunt bisons because they need the meat for food and furs/hide for clothing and shelter. In contrast, white folks kill bisons even when they’re not hungry because they wanna keep making more money and/or to practice a kind of prairie consumerism of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. An earlier film, NEVER CRY WOLF, showed that this ‘greed’ is not monopolized by whites but all people(at least once they’ve been introduced to modernity). In the film, it turns out that a young Eskimo killed the wolves so he could craft their bones into a nice set of false teeth so as to increase his chances of finding a woman. The Eskimo may not have been after big money, but he did act out of vanity, a kind of sensual greed. It wasn’t enough for him to have enough to eat and live ‘in harmony with nature’; he wanted to look presentable to the other sex with a pair of teeth. (Personally, I never much believed in the conceit of primitive people living in ‘harmony with nature’. Give any bunch of African tribesmen AK-47s, and they’ll soon be blasting away at anything for the fun of it. East Asians are said to be nature worshipers, but they wiped out entire species of animals and plants even before the coming of white man’s modern technology. And indeed, what is more vain and greedy than torturing bears for their bile or killing them just for their gall bladders and paws? What kind of spiritual people would have a big rhino killed just to use its horn for dubious medicine?) Beard Power had a way of taming Muscle Power but, being based on status and privilege of age, could be awful corrupt. Thus, the first old-boys-network came into being, and old guys played the young guys like the generals play the young soldiers in PATHS OF GLORY. Beard Power was said to be wise since old patriarchs possessed knowledge drawn from their experience of life, but generally speaking, Beard Power demanded obedience and respect than search for the truth. As Confucius said, “just listen, and do as I say, not as I do.” So, the great promise for mankind was Brain Power, the power of reason, to act as a counterbalance against both Muscle Power and Beard Power. Indeed, in an order dominated by Muscle Power, Brain Power is a precious and valuable thing. And in an order dominated by Beard Power, Brain Power can be essential as a challenge to unquestioned hierarchy and orthodoxy. And in the past, when most of the world was dominated by Muscle Power or Beard Power, Brain Power was the engine for positive change. But as Brain Power gained legitimacy in the late modern era, it went from challenging other forms of power to becoming THE DOMINANT form of power. The nature of power is such that power wants more power. When modern Jews didn’t have much power, they used their Brain Power to challenge the Beard Power of traditional rabbis and gentile conservatives. And since Jews were never known for their brawn or numerical power, Brain Power was crucial to their success and rise. But once Jews gained ever greater power through their superior Brain Power, their power of reason came to be used less and less for pursuit of truth and justice and more and more for the pursuit of Jewish power for Jewish power’s sake. Though Jews were always for Jewish power, there had been a time when they idealized Brain Power as a tool for truth as opposed to the mindless might-is-right power of the muscle and the dogmatic old-is-gold power of the beard. By employing Brain Power, the new narrative became Jew-is-new. Though Jewish Brain Power was often deceitful, cunning, and manipulative ― just consider the bogus theories of Franz Boas ― , Jews in the past understood the necessity of having to argue, debate, demonstrate, and win their arguments in an open forum where all sides would be heard and judged by rational discourse and logic supported by evidence. Since Jewish power was far from dominant or all-powerful, Jews felt a need to use their intelligence to prove that they were right. But look around today, and there’s only the merest pretense of reasoned debate. Some Jews even say we must suppress factual truths ― such those pertaining to differences among races ― and favor ‘noble lies’ for the ‘social good’(when, in truth, Jews wanna suppress certain views in order to safeguard themselves from ‘antisemitic’ criticism that speaks truth to Jewish power). Thus, Reason, which had long been idealized as an instrument of truth in a world dominated by bullying muscle and corrupt beard, now exists largely as a weapon of Jews to destroy their enemies, and this explains why Jews all over the world have become so utterly arrogant and corrupt. Jewish Brain Power is no longer used to challenge mindless thuggery or dim-witted superstitions/orthodoxies but to silence any fact, evidence, argument, or debate that may challenge Jewish supremacist control of the world, especially in the US and EU.
This is why the Jewish Powers-that-be find the Catholic Church useful as their target of abuse. Though Catholic power and control have been waning ― indeed even falling steeply ― in recent years, it’s in the interest of Jews to prop up the image of the all-powerful Church in order to fool us that Jewish Brain Power is still the truth-sniffing underdog tracking down a dangerous behemoth whose nefarious tentacles stretch out all over the world. Today, Jews are many times richer and more powerful than Catholics ― and much of the blame must go to Catholics for their lack of imagination, corruption, and mindless orthodoxies ― , Jews would have us believe that they are the little guy using their intelligence to shine the light of truth on the filthy child-molesting Catholics. We even have books accusing the Vatican of aiding and abetting Hitler during WWII, in essence saying that the Pope was a participant in the Holocaust ― as if Jews themselves throughout history put their own necks on the line for the good of other people! In truth, Jewish display of moral outrage over Catholic corruption has little to do with Jewish concern for victims of child molestation ― as there are plenty of dirty Rabbis guilty of the same thing and plenty of dirty Jews in Hollywood who sexually exploit anything with a hole ― and almost everything to do with justifying Jewish power. Whenever Jews fume about filthy-and-obscene Catholics, they are saying, “the world needs us wonderfully rational Jews to blow the whistle on the irrational bigoted forces of the Old Order.” But, only a fool could possibly think that Reason and Intelligence are used by Jews(in the social, cultural, and political spheres)for the common good of man. Reason, or the Cult of Reason, is not primarily being used to combat ignorance but to suppress truth. Though some people do use Reason to counter the social influences of Creationist idiots and the like, many so-called ‘rational’ Jews actually employ a corrupted form of Reason to suppress possible opponents of Jewish power. Thus, anyone who’s critical of Jewish power is said to be an ‘odious’, ‘noxious’, ‘rabid’, and ‘virulent’ ‘anti-Semite’. Such person is said to be so clinically insane and foaming-at-the-mouth that no rational person could take him seriously. Indeed, such a person should be fined, prosecuted, and locked up if the likes of Elena Kagan and Cass the Ass Sunstein can help it. Just as the ‘rational’ and ‘secular’ Soviet Union locked up ‘communophobes’, people who were critical of communism, in mental prisons ― the reasoning being that one had to be clinically crazy not to accept the scientific truth of Marxist-Leninist socialism ― , Jewish power today would have us believe that Reason, Intelligence, and Truth are entirely owned by ‘liberals’(especially of the Jewish persuasion) and that anyone who casts doubt on such notion must be foaming-at-the-mouth crazy. Thus, given human nature’s desire for power, even Reason becomes yet another tool of power than an instrument of truth. In the New World Order, it is high treason not to embrace Jewish Reason. And notice that the criticality so crucial to Reason is purely selective in the hands of Jews. Thus, according to Jews, it is entirely reasonable for Jews and non-whites to take a very harshly critical look at Western history, white people, and Wasp power; however, it is NOT ALRIGHT for whites to take a hard critical look at Jewish power-lust and Negro passion for violence. So, Jews can use the sharp scalpel and scalding acid of reason against Wasp America, but white America is only to get down on its knees and worship the Jew by giving him a blow job followed by a rim job. Jews probe and inspect you like a judge, doctor, psychiatrist, and research scientist, but you must bow down and kneel before the Jew of the Church of Jewish Holiness. Jews have the right to question and revise the history of your people, but you must never ever question the sacred Jewish version of the Holocaust. (There is an element of class dynamic in the shift of Jewish use of Reason. At one time in America and in Eastern Europe, most Jews were poor and worked at manual labor. Though there were fabulously rich Jews in banking and big retail, most Jews were not rich and a good number, even the majority, were dirt poor. So, much of Jewish energy was invested in Working Class or Proletarian consciousness, which is why Jews were so heavily involved in labor movements. But Jewish social mobility happened so quickly that it wasn’t long before most Jews were working at white-collar jobs, dominating media/academic professions, or owning/operating their own businesses. Because of their roots in socialism and labor unions, Jews maintained an ideological link with the American labor movement, but as time passed, Jews found themselves identifying more with big business, Wall Street, and elite circles than with the unwashed masses of workers. In the past, there had been a conflict between rich Jews of Germanic background and poor Jews with Eastern European origins. A good number of rich Germanic Jews belonged to the GOP and sided with the propertied class while most Jews who came from Eastern Europe were on the Left of the social and political spectrum. But as Jews of Eastern European origin became as rich or even richer than Germanic Jews, they began to identify more with people at the top. Though working class Jews had once been allied with working class goyim, the successful children of working class Jews found they had little in common culturally, morally, and politically with working class goyim who, though politically on the Left, happened to be socially and culturally on the Right ― and willfully ignorant and even ‘antisemitic’. For socio-historico-moral reasons, Jews maintained their ideological affinity for ‘working class rights’, but it became more and more academic over the yrs. If in the past Jews fought for the working class interests because they too were members of the lower class, the later Jewish progressives were actually affluent intellectuals or academics who never stepped inside a factory or hung around working class folks. Naomi Klein and her parents, for example, have been intellectual leftists all their lives, people used to privilege in their vaunted roles as the defenders of the working class, but it was essentially a shtick to justify their self-importance as privileged members of an elite that never had to do any real work. It’s been quite awhile since most Democratic Jews came to favor Wall Street, ‘free trade’, and globalist capitalism over working class interests. Today, Democrats throw crumbs to the labor unions, but it’s mostly symbolic. If in the past, labor union power was about patriotism, it’s now about globalism, what with unions even accepting illegal aliens into their ranks. This is justified in the name of siding with the poor and downtrodden, but it’s really to push the globalist capitalist agenda. After all, if labor unions are no longer patriotic and even accept illegal aliens in their ranks, it means they have acceded to the globalist capitalist agenda of dissolving national borders and allowing globalist capitalists to hire the cheapest workers they can find anytime, anywhere, and anyhow. It’s no wonder that Democrats now make so much fuss about ‘gay rights’. Democratic Party is the party of privilege and no longer represents the patriotic masses, no longer stands up for the little guy. So, to maintain its image as the party of justice, it now waves the gay flag. Why did Obama do so little to support the opponent of Scott Walker in the recall election in Wisconsin? Because despite all the Democratic fuss about the rights of unions, most rich Democrats too are hostile to union demands. By focusing on Walker as the bad guy, Democrats diverted people’s attention from the fact that Democratic politicians ― at the behest of Democratic elites ― have been doing the same thing in places like NY and CA that Walker was doing in Wisconsin. Thus, all the Leftist rage about Walker was really a red herring. Similarly, Obama and the Jewish media made a big stink about GOP’s ties to Wall Street while laying the ground for Obama’s massive bailout for Wall Street Jews. Americans were so angry with Bush/McCain’s ties to Wall Street that they were completely blind to Obama’s even bigger ties to Wall Street that, in fact, favored the monkey boy in donations.)
There have been instances of Greed being romanticized in fiction, perhaps most of all in the classic gangster movie. The difference between a gangster and a cowboy/gunman is the former has no sense of limits. The cowboy may love wide open spaces but not so much to own the space but to roam freely in it ― along with other cowboys(and even with Indians if they’re peaceable enough). Though big ranchers in Westerns can be criminal and act like gangsters, they are really about preserving their way of life than trying to be top of the world. By the very nature of their work, ranchers must hire lots of men, and so cooperation is key to their success. There is an hierarchy among the men but also a sense of shared interests and work. And if gunfights flare up sometimes, it’s to be expected in frontier territories yet to be tamed. So, cowboys are violent by necessity than out of conviction.
Unlike the cowboy, the gangster ― at least in the Classic gangster movie ― lives in the very heart of civilization, the big city. Since city is crowded with people and buildings, there isn’t much in the way of open spaces. And though the car allows for faster travel and freedom, it must navigate through streets jammed with traffic and around endless mazes of buildings. Freedom in the Western is horizontal, with the cowboy moving freely in all directions ― though he must ever be on the lookout for outlaws, Indians, or lawmen(if he’s an outlaw himself). Since the urban world of the city has already been settled and claimed, the gangster movie is vertical. Since the gangster cannot roam freely in all directions, his ambition is to reach the top. (To be sure, THE GODFATHER, the remake of SCARFACE, and GOODFELLAS are suburban than urban gangster movies. If the early Hollywood gangster flicks had hoodlums fighting for turf in the very heart of the city, the Corleones have moved to a nice quiet mansion in the suburbs ― and then later move to an even more secluded place in Reno. Tony Montana lives in a big mansion in the suburbs of Miami. And the hoodlums of Goodfellas live in homes with green lawns.) Competition in the Western can be deadly, but the cowboy has the chance of moving into a new territory for more free space. The gangster has no such option. He must succeed and win where he stands. He must climb over the shoulders of his rivals.
Also, given the nature of the frontier, the cowboy is compelled to act according to need. Even if there’s a lot of fortune to be made off the land, he has to a lot of physical work to, for example, steer the cattle, plant seeds in the soil, drill for oil, or dig for gold. And even with lots of money or gold, nothing comes to him easily. The bank may be far away and most trading goods stores sell only basic items. Consider the scene in OPEN RANGE where the Kevin Costner character and Robert Duvall character fear it may be their last day on earth ― as they must go face to face with a gang of cold-blooded killers ― , and so they figure on enjoying themselves in what may be the last few hours of their lives. So, they decided to indulge in some ‘luxury items’ at the town store, but the fanciest stuff they can find are some good cigars and chocolate bars. Even for the 49ers who went looking for gold, they knew they’d have to work long grueling hours under hard conditions for the chance of striking it rich. Thus, even if they were motivated by ‘greed’, they accepted the overwhelming mode of ‘need’ that they would have to endure to make things work. (To be sure, some gold miners employed the industrial approach to gold-mining, as seen in PALE RIDER directed by Clint Eastwood. The movie contrasts the honest toilers of gold-digging with greedy major operators hogging the entire territory and raping it mercilessly for every last ounce of gold. Given Eastwood’s connection to Hollywood, the biggest movie industry in the world ― maybe bigger than all the other movie industries combined ― , it is rather amusing that he would peddle the good little folks vs the big evil folks narrative, but such populism sells well ― and in politics too, which is why both anti-capitalist leftists and anti-corporate libertarians will direct their venom at Big Business while praising the small businessmen. In the world of cinema, idealists tend to pit the independents who make ‘personal art films’ to big Hollywood that produces formulaic products. So, profits are okay as long as they are made ‘honestly’, ‘moderately’, and ‘idealistically’ while it’s deemed to be perverse when made excessively, impersonally, and collusively ― often with politicians ‘owned’ by corporations. On the other hand, wanton greed can sometimes seem refreshing and even honest, as in SCARFACE with Al Pacino. Tony Montana may be a vain and greedy monster, but he’s utterly honest about his wants in life. In his own way, he’s faithful to his dream; indeed, he doesn’t even fool around once he marries the woman of his life. He’s a bad guy but an honest bad guy unlike the Latin American kingpin who made his fortune in drugs but acts so respectable.) There’s always an element of delayed gratification in the Western ― unless one’s ambition is to rob a bank and then head straight to the saloon for a drink. Take the movie RED RIVER. The men are working for money, but they must work extra hard and go through all the travails of the cattle drive. And even if they were to make it, it’s gonna be a long ride back before they can enjoy their earnings ― and even then, fun will amount to some drinking at the local saloon.
Thinks are different in the gangster film. Once one has his operation running, money comes in very fast, and since the gangster’s domain is the city, he can afford just about anything: fancy cars, expensive clothes, luxury items like jewelry, best food and drink at the top clubs and restaurants, gorgeous dames scented with expensive perfumes and draped in fur, and etc.
When Horace Greeley said ‘Go West, Young Man’, he meant there would be lots of adventures and excitements but also the necessity of rolling up the sleeves and working hard to create civilization out of a wilderness. And though outlaws roamed the West, they could never rise like the gangsters. Take the Lee Marvin character in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. He’s a robber/killer alright, but even with his loot, there isn’t much for him to do but drink at saloons and eat steak n potaters. A successful gangster, in contrast, can rise very high and live like a king.
The cowboy and gangster have one thing in common: both are outsiders in a way. The cowboy could be someone who trekked to the West from the East, Midwest, or the South. Surrounded by animals, wilderness, Indians, and other cowboys(who have yet to settle their boots in the vast new territory), the newly arrived white man in the West is like a fish out of water. But because most of the land is wilderness, the white man, as a cowboy(or some other Western archetype), has the opportunity to reshape the West to his own liking, especially as others of his kind arrive. Thus, the cowboy isn’t so much trying to fit into the environment as trying to make it fit into his idea of what the new order is to be. He’s a conqueror/settler than an immigrant.
The gangster is an outsider too. He wants riches and to shmooze with the powers-that-be, but he lacks the learning, patience, and credentials to rise to the top through legitimate means. So, he enters the life of crime, and not just petty crime but organized crime operated as a semi-legitimate business(not least with protection bought from cops and politicians). Since the means of production and organizations already exist in the city, the gangster doesn’t need to build something entirely from scratch as cowboys do. As long as he can outwit and out-muscle the competition and have people work for him, he can ride high almost instantly ― at least according to gangster movies. Thus, Tony Montana goes in no time from small-time hoodlum to the top druglord of Miami in SCARFACE. Edward G. Robinson as the gangster in LITTLE CAESAR rose instantly too. Because the gangster can immediately indulge in all kinds of excesses once he has the money, he’s prone to be far greedier than the richest cowboy(who must go to town for some fancy stuff and even there has a very limited choice, especially since many nice items has to be mail-ordered). Flush with all that instant power and riches, the gangster goes into the mode of hyper-greed. Then, why is the gangster so romanticized? It’s because his greed is reckless and brash than hoarding and hunching. Scrooge and Shylock rake in the wealth, hide most of it, and take pleasure in money-for-money’s sake. In contrast, the gangster likes to wear his wealth and show it off. He’s greedy but shamelessly and gloriously greedy. Greed becomes a kind of performance art, a Rock n Roll act. Thus, even as the gangster is a scumbag, there’s an element of honesty in his greed. He doesn’t rake it all in and hide it under the bed. He goes out of his way to tell the world that he loves money and power and enjoys being a cartoon caricature of capitalism. Of course, not all gangsters have been so childish and dumb, and some maintained a long winning streak by using their brains than tugging at their balls, but even Al Capone, while pretending to be just a quiet citizen of Chicago, couldn’t help show off. But whatever the reality, the classic movie gangster rises and explodes like a firework. He has to have everything right away and live for the thrill of having it; and once he has it, he needs to jack up the thrill level to feel the same kind of excitement. Greed becomes like a narcotic, and he needs bigger doses until he can’t handle it anymore.
While most Westerns are moral tales, most gangster movies are cautionary tales. In ethnic terms, Westerns are very Anglo-centric whereas the gangster movie is essentially immigrant-centric.
Paradoxically, Anglo-Americans had both the hardest and the easiest time in America. They had it hardest because when they arrived in the North American wilderness, there was no civilization to speak of. There were the Indians, but the world of the Indians was not something the newcomers much cared for or wanted to assimilate into. Thus, Anglo-Americans had to create a new nation/civilization out of the vast wilderness. Anglo-Americans had to fight Indians, chop down trees, create farmlands, build cities, build roads and bridges, and etc. Anglo-Americans, unlike later immigrants, didn’t have the option of conforming to a ready-made order. And though much has been made of the suffering of Negro slaves, blacks had it easier in the sense that they only needed to do as told by whites. It was whites who had to do all the planning, designing, organizing, and managing; and indeed most of the farming in the South was still done by whites. Thus, there soon came to be great cities from what had been a vast wildernesses. (And Anglos did comparably great things even in the Old World. Bombay, Singapore, and Hong Kong were all built from scratch nothing by Anglos. The Anglo work ethic served Anglo-Americans well.) White folks needed to work extra hard to turn a vast wilderness into a major civilization in the span of a century ― and this at a time when most people still had to rely on manual labor to chop down trees and lay railroad tracks. But work ethic alone couldn’t have accomplished what was accomplished. Anglo-Americans had a kind of ‘think ethic’ whereby folks had to be pragmatically intelligent, resourceful, and creative to improve society. Perhaps no American embodied this ideal better than Thomas Edison ― and there was also Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers. Though Chinese and Japanese had the work ethic, they lacked the ‘think ethic’, which is why most of them stuck to the old ways of doing the same thing for centuries(and maintained that mental habit even in the modern world, which is why changes have been slow to come to East Asia unless approved by elites). Given the trail-blazing and city-building achievements of Anglo-Americans, the immigrants who came later had it ‘easy’. Not easy in the sense that they could lie around and eat grapes like Roman emperors. No, in physical terms, immigrants had to work very hard in factories and on the fields ― and many of them did little but toil all their lives. But it was ‘easy’ in the sense that they only needed to conform to a ready-made social/political/economic order. They had to work hard but didn’t have to think or manage as hard as Anglo-Americans had done. Though immigrants filled up the cities and worked to build skyscrapers and the like, they were following orders of Anglo-American managers, and their children were attending schools already built by Anglo-Americans; and they were beneficiaries of a political and legal system created and established by Anglo-Americans. So, they had it ‘easy’ in that sense.
But in another sense, Anglo-Americans had it easier than the immigrants. Since they’d arrived first and took up the privileged positions of society, many more of them were in a situation to help/favor others of their kind, especially their own children. Thus, since most rich people in late 19th century and early 20th century were Anglo-Americans, their children were born into privilege. In contrast, the newly arrived immigrant groups arrived with nothing, and their children had to work extra hard to make something of themselves in a society already owned by Anglo-Americans. (But we must remind ourselves that MOST Anglo-Americans weren’t rich or privileged and faced much of the same problems of diseases, ignorance, and poverty as immigrant groups did.) For the less ambitious among the immigrant groups, life was bearable and even good in America if they got a steady job with steady pay. Whatever hardships they had to endure, they found freedom and dignity in America they didn’t have in the Old World. But for the most ambitious among the immigrant groups, rise to the top seemed daunting since so much of the power was concentrated in Anglo-American hands. Though Anglo-Americans had built a new nation out of nothing, they’d faced little competition from other groups, and so elite positions naturally and easily fell into Anglo-American hands, i.e. once Anglo-Americans got rid of American Indians, they pretty ran the entire show; and Mexicans were a pushover later when Anglo-Americans made their move into the SW territories.
But the rise to the top wasn’t so easy for immigrant groups. Anglo-Americans not only had a head-start in the game of power but had historical legitimacy over their power: Since they’d settled and built the United States, who but they should rule America? And most groups were okay with this arrangement, but the Jews who began to sense that they were smarter than Wasps ― also, Jews had been playing the game of absolute power for thousands of years more than Anglo/Americans, and their devious/cunning/hideous nature made them want to gain Nibelungenish power over America. This is something most Anglo-Americans never understood. Even a social commentator as astute as the Blogger Named Ernest still holds out hope for Jews making peace with Anglo-America and abandoning their hostility. He obviously hasn’t seen EUREKA by Nicolas Roeg, which shows the true nature of the gnawing rat-like Jew.
As it turned out, even as Anglo-Americans employed various means to maintain their domination over the nation, they were committed to some broad sense of fairness that opened up ever increasing opportunities for ethnic whites. Also, many Anglo-Americans, in their do-goody idealism, went out of their way to help non-Anglos succeed and rise to the top, which goes to show do-goodery can be real stupid(at least when it comes to Negroes and Jews who don’t know the meaning of gratitude). Gradually, most white ethnic immigrant groups became more or less Anglo-Americanized, and some of their members reached the upper echelons of society. But not everyone had the patience or virtues to make the gradual climb through hard work and proper credentials. Some immigrants or first generation children of immigrants became cynical and nasty. Or some immigrants arrived with Old World vices or passions. The radicals wanted to change society overnight with bombs, and gangsters wanted to grow rich overnight with guns. They justified their viciousness convincing themselves to believe that Anglo-Americans(and maybe some Irish-Americans, a kind of third-rate potatohead version of Anglo-Americans) held all the cards of wealth, privilege, and power in America. Thus, if you weren’t of the Wasp or Irish breed, you had no chance of making it in America unless you wanted to be a sucker working in a factory, a mine, or fields. So, the ONLY way one could rise to the top was through organized crime ― this is the underlying theme of THE GODFATHER. Thus, even if you didn’t want to be greedy, you had to be ‘greedy’ to break through to the top since the glass ceiling was so very thick. Since you couldn’t rise legally and legitimately ― in a system that was rigged ― , you had to strong-arm and/or con your way to the top. (To an extent, such cynicism was as much a projection of Old World attitudes as an assessment of American realities. Since little people really had little chance of success in the more fixed and rigid order of European nations, they thought likewise about the power in America. The more corrupt the nation from which the immigrants came, the more cynical they tended to be about America itself. Sicily, for example, was an island run by criminals, and so Sicilian immigrants thought power in America pretty much worked the same way. Such attitudes were both sincere and disingenuous: sincere because cultural assumptions die hard and disingenuous as a convenient way to justify one’s own group’s violations of American laws. It could be that many Irish-Americans were full of distrust, corruption, and cynicism because of their experience in the Old World. Irish saw the Anglo-British as privileged oppressors, and this hostility might have been projected onto Anglo-Americans. While many Irish-Americans merged into the fabric of American life and assimilated into the Anglo-American elite order, others ran government institutions of big cities like fiefdoms or even criminal enterprises. Consider the Sterling Hayden character in THE GODFATHER. Consider the connections between Irish-American cops and Irish-American criminals in MYSTIC RIVER. Take James Cagney, a typical Irish-American.)
If many Wasps developed and came to possess a cowboy mentality ― especially in the West ― , Jews, most of whom arrived as immigrants in a nation ready-made by Wasps, developed a gangster mentality. When we speak of mentalities, of course one doesn’t have to be a cowboy or gangster to be of such mentality. What is important is that the cowboy is no match for the gangster, just as the countryside is no match for the city. (Whites lost the Russian Civil War because Reds controlled the cities. And as long as the Soviets held onto big cities like Moscow and Leningrad, Nazis couldn’t topple the Soviet regime no matter how much of the countryside they’d conquered.) Indeed, one of the reasons for the rise of Jews and fall of Wasp is that Jewish power came to be concentrated in cities whereas many Wasps withdrew to the suburbs(or remained in small towns). As cities swelled with immigrant populations ― and the funny smell of their foods ― and then with Negroes, many well-to-do Wasps chose to move out to stable and quiet suburbs. Life away from the city was more pleasant but also sapped of the fierce competitive spirit that defined city-life. As for small-town Wasps, many of them chose to remain put due to all the horror stories they heard about the grime/crime, corruption, and pathologies of the cities. Life may have been quieter and more stable in small towns, but small town folks tend to be conservative than creative, static than dynamic. Though many Jews also eventually moved to suburbs in huge numbers, they maintained their city mentality.
While many Wasp wives were perfectly happy to be ‘house-wives’, Jewish women in the suburbs like Betty Friedan saw the life of a suburban housewife as a kind of brain-dead and soul-killing prison of stasis. Thus, if white people moved to the suburbs to get away from the city, Jews moved to the suburbs for good schools and safer streets, but their spirit remained closely linked to the city for city-life had defined Jewish life for so long. Even before modernity, when most goyim lived in the countryside, a disproportionate number of Jews lived in cities or moved from one city to another. Since Jews had to rely on wits to survive & thrive and since the countryside was populated with rubes for whom even hopping over dung could be a difficult mental task, Jews preferred the culture of the city. Also, due to their relatively smaller numbers, Jews felt safer in cities because demographic concentration meant some degree of unity. Thus, the ghetto was both a curse and a blessing for the Jew. A curse because it was like a prison-community for Jews but also a blessing because so many Jews living in one place meant Jews could maintain their own culture, politics, tradition, customs, and etc. An isolated rural Jew could be attacked by a gang of goy rubes, but a city Jew could rely on other city Jews living on the same block. Though Warsaw Ghetto Uprising failed miserably, the fact that there was an uprising at all was due to the high concentration of Jews in the ghetto. It’s like the 300 Spartans constituted a fearsome fighting force because they stuck closely together. This is one of the contradictions of Jewish history/life. Few people have been as close-knit and concentrated as the Jews, but it’s also true that few people have been as nomadic, spread out, dispersed, and integrated with the rest of the world. This may explain the two-faced-ness and the two-brained-ness of Jews. Jews wanna spread out and own the entire world but maintain their Jewish Identity and Supremacy as a 1000 Year Reichowicz. One way Jews do this is by maintaining a powerful sense of their historical identity while promoting tribal amnesia among the goyim. No people are as well-read about their own heritage, history, and culture as the Jews are. But no people are as committed to destroying the heritages, histories, or cultures of other peoples. Jews praise America as a nation that ‘constantly remakes itself’, and by this, Jews mean that white Americans should forget about their glorious past and just accept the new order of Obama as messiah, Elena Kagan as legal master, illegal aliens as the New Americans, and Jews as the permanent overlords. While Jews teach their own kids to maintain their proud and profound sense of Jewishness, Jews push all manner of trashy pop culture that encourages young people of all other races to embrace ever-shifting and ever-disposable TV shows, Hollywood movies, and pop songs as the core of their cultural life and identity. Many Jews who create such garbage shield their own children from it. Their own children are made to watch only intelligent TV shows, read lots of books, study up on Jewish history and culture, and groomed for private schools and elite colleges; they grow up to work for Jewish power. But many white American kids now grow up with no interest and knowledge in their own history. And what little they learn about their own past only teaches them to hate themselves and their ancestors; much of modern education and entertainment are filtered and shaped by venal liberal Jews and their gutless and ball-less allies and puppets like Ken Burns. Jewish porn kings exploit white women but send their own kids to private schools and instill them with Jewish pride. Cultural amnesia is a weapon of the Jews. Even so, much of the blame must go to conservatives. Contrary to what ‘conservative’ means, conservatives are among the most mindless and amnesiac people in the world. Many of them care more about comfort ― mental as well as physical ― than the truth. They prefer the Disney Land of the mind. You can see this in David Duke videos, which would have you believe that Old America was all happy and nice, with wonderful peace-loving white people with big smiles and nice white teeth and etc prancing about under a bright Sun. This kind of antisepticism can be found in Mormonism too. Conservatives prefer the homilism of Norman Rockwell paintings and brain-withering country songs. This isn’t to say Rockwell was entirely worthless or country music hasn’t produced its share of fine songs but to point out that American conservatism is based essentially on faith or faith-based thinking. Partly, this is due to the difference between Old Testament and New Testament. Old Testament is like a history book that has to be read and studied carefully; and as the Messiah hasn’t yet arrived according to Jews, nothing in THIS WORLD can be taken on faith. Only God is to be worshiped on the basis of faith, but everything has to be learned, memorized, preserved, analyzed, and debated. Thus, Judaism was the religion of literacy. Though not all Jews could read through history, there was no doubt among Jews that the more learned were closer to God, and part of this closeness derived from a close reading and understanding of Jewish history, which was essentially the story of Jews’ relation to God. Christianity, in contrast, was an illiterate religion. Though Christianity produced great many scholars and literature on the subject of religion, the essence of Christianity wasn’t to study and think but to remain innocent and rely on faith. To be a good Christian, one needed not even know the Old Testament or even be able to read the New Testament. He or she only needed to be pure as a lamb, accept Jesus as his/her Savior, attend church and sing hymns, and pray before eating and sleeping. Though educated Christians ― especially the clergy ― surely got more respect than illiterate dummies, the highest kind of person according to Christianity was the Saint, and sainthood wasn’t determined by knowledge, intelligence, or brilliance but by faith, goodness, and being doe-eyed as your tormentors burned you to death ― consider the look on the heroine’s face in THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC by Carl Dreyer. And consider the donkey-as-saint in Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHASAR. Jesus said an ideal person should be like a meek lamb. This is different from Judaism where the highest kind of person is the Prophet(followed by rabbinical scholars). Jews valued prophets and scholars as bearers of the Jewish torch(of history, spirituality, and heritage) lighting the path for the Messiah who would finally arrive and whup all enemies of Jews and made Jews as the rulers of all of mankind. Christians had no use for prophets since the Messiah had already arrived and laid down the final truth. Since the Truth had already been given to mankind, people only needed to listen, follow, and have faith ― and best of such people committed to do-goodiness would even qualify as saints.
Of course, Jesus was Jewish and something of angry prophet himself. And it’s probably true that all Jewish prophets wanted Jews to shut up, stop bickering, and get with the program. But Jewish prophets never claimed to be equal with God ― as Christian mythology would have us believe of Jesus ― , and since they lived and spoke as humans ― as messengers of God ― , they valued the human qualities necessary for survival. The very traits that made Jews difficult ― hostility, skepticism, argumentativeness, talkativeness, and etc. ― were also seen as necessary since Jews always had to be in competitive mode not only among themselves but with other tribes and kingdoms. And even though the Jewish Prophets served as messengers of God, they couldn’t claim to know everything about God or how the future was really going to play out. Jesus, at least according to Christian mythology, wasn’t merely a Prophet but the Messiah. But He wasn’t just a Messiah as warrior-defender-of-Jews sent by God but the Messiah as the Son of God and equal of God. So, unlike Jewish Prophets, Jesus understood the very essence of God since as the Son of God, He was one with God. Knowing everything and the deepest truth of God, Jesus could go out on a limb and preach ultra-virtue, something Jewish Prophets had always feared to do. The Prophets wanted Jews to be good, decent, and moral, but as tribal/communal leaders, they feared that too much goodness among Jews might make them soft targets for aggressive goy tribes. Therefore, Prophets had to be both moral leaders and warrior-leaders. There was a time for everything under the Sun. Time to kill, time to make peace, time to be good, time to be nasty, time to be honest, time to lie, etc. The world was the way it was since God made it that way ― and Adam and Eve sort of messed it up ― , and Jews had to navigate between virtue and victory(which sometimes required the suspension of virtue, as when Israelites had to raze entire cities of filthy goyim). But Jesus was more than a Prophet; He was more than a Messiah. He was the Messiah as the Son of God, the equal of God. Thus, He could confidently preach absolute goodness since He had full access to it in the heart of God. And since He was of the Kingdom of Heaven, He didn’t care about defeat in the World of Man. Human history, according to Jesus, was just a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of eternity with God. For man to gain access to that ocean, he had to stop worrying about his survival and success in the worldly world. It didn’t matter who temporarily won in the world of man since true victory could be attained only in the Kingdom of Heaven, and in order to win a ticket to that paradise, one had to embrace absolute or ultra-virtue as preached by Jesus. One must always be good, and if one has done bad, one must never rationalize one’s deed but repent and confess and embrace total goodness. And one need not fear losing in the World of Man from of being too good ― ‘turn the other cheek’ and all that ― since ultimate vengeance was with God, i.e. the saint who lost in the World of Man would be a winner in the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus, the paradox of Jesus is that He could be for ultra-humility because He was also about ultra-arrogance. The arrogance that led Him to believe that He’s the Son of God assured Him that in the cosmic contest between Good and Evil, the Good will prevail ― in the Kingdom of Heaven if not in the World of Man. With such confidence, Jesus could go around preaching meekness and humility as the cardinal virtues of man. In contrast, it was the lack of such spiritual confidence/arrogance that made Prophets angrier and more arrogant in the World of Man. While the Jewish Prophets believed in the greatness of their one and only God, they could never be sure what His grand design really was ― and indeed for them to pretend that they did would have been blasphemous for implying that they could see into the mind of God ― , and so there was always an element of anxiety in regards to virtue among the Jewish Prophets. What if the Prophets preached to Jews to be totally good, but such goodness only led to Jews getting their asses whupped by non-Jews? Filled with such anxiety, Prophets not only preached morality but warrior/hustler ethics. Christian saints, utterly confident in their ultimate triumph in the Kingdom of Heaven, could lose and die in peace in the World of Man. But Jewish Prophets weren’t sure that being utterly good would lead to some kind of eventual victory for Jews. If the core of Christianity taught men that the heart is the center of one’s spiritual life, and therefore, the cultivation of the pure heart would ensure spiritual victory and entry into eternal paradise; the core of Judaism has been the brains(followed by balls, penis, and poon), as if God gave people brains for a reason: to use it. In other words, it wasn’t enough for men to have a good-heart; they must have sharp brains. After all, if God just wanted men to be good, why didn’t He just equip mankind with only hearts? Why the brains?
And ideally at least, since Christians believe in the Kingdom of Heaven, sexuality isn’t important(at least theoretically) to their creed. A Christian can have no kids and no family and just pray to God and be good and go to Heaven. Since Jews were less sure about what God really meant and promised ― and weren’t sure what exactly ensured one’s entry into the Kingdom of Heaven if such a realm existed in the first place ― , Jews were more keen on producing children to ensure the survival and success of the Jewish people. Also, Christians could increase their numbers simply by spreading the Faith around whereas Jews could only increase their numbers by having kids through sex(with other Jews). Thus, the linkage of the mind and the penis/poon that surfaced in the ideas of Sigmund Freud had deep roots in Jewish thought. It is this linkage of brains and groins that makes Jews such aggressive thinkers and doers. There’s an intellectual tradition in Anglo civilization, but Wasp thought is ideally about intellect rising above animal passions. Thus, the ideal English intellectual talks and thinks drily and maintains an air of dispassion. Even when he bickers, he holds a lofty tone and proper manners. Anglo thought has also centered around factualism or empiricism and logic, on the ideal of objectivity. Thus, even when an Anglo got excited by some discovery, he checked his emotions and approached the subject as something to classify and inspect. This isn’t to suggest that Anglos were entirely without passion; after all, consider English Romantics as cultural movers and shakers of the 19th century ― but then, notice that Brits made their greatest mark in the more rational form of literature than in music or fine arts. Anglos had passion but were keen to separate it from intellect. Thus, English poets wrote flowery prose, but English intellectuals were supposed to be as dry as possible. In time, the ideal of intellectual objectivity came to shape and color other aspects of English life. English painting, for example, produced many precise masters, but the works generally lacked the passion, color, and personality of French, Spanish, and German painters. English music produced many fine technicians with an almost ‘objective’ mastery of the music, but few artists on the titanic level of Verdi, Beethoven, and Wagner who fused technical mastery with personality and passion. And one of the hallmarks of the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock is a certain emotional distance between the artist and his art. Hitchcock’s suspense is more a science than an emotion, i.e. he works on our emotions without emotionally getting entangled himself. In the early Hitchcock movies, even or especially when the suspense is most intense, Hitchcock’s absolute control commands the screen, as if he’s ‘objectively’ fine-tuning fright into logical blueprint. (This changed somewhat in his later American movies,
especially beginning with VERTIGO ― followed by PSYCHO, the hysterical BIRDS, and MARNIE ― where Hitchcock dropped some of his Anglo reserve/restraint and went with the emotions. Especially the scene where James Stewart’s character in VERTIGO swoons over the resurrected ‘Madeline’ and embraces and kisses her goes beyond the mechanics of storytelling. Hitchcock was finally sharing-and-baring of the emotions; he wasn’t merely pulling the strings of his puppets but pulling on his own pud.) This could also be said of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christine, and it was prolly no accident that Britain produced so many fine mystery writers. For the British, mystery was a logical genre with rules that revealed the hidden machinations of human motivations and behavior. Unlike Russians who accept mystery as part of the mystical order of things, British view of mystery was as a puff of smoke, i.e. get rid of the smoke and objective reality comes into view. To be sure, some Brits violently reacted to this aspect of their culture which they found to be imaginatively limited and limiting, creatively dry, and personality-wise hoity-toity. Romantics in the 19th century rebelled by reveling in drugs(especially opium) and perfecting the genre of Gothic Horror. Unlike the Mystery genre where the mystery is exposed to be a trick whereby the objective reality wins the day, the Horror genre accepted mystery as eternally unsolvable and unfathomable. And later in the 20th century, there was British Rock inspired by the murky emotions of Black American blues music and there was a new kind of cinema defined by directors like the abysmal Ken Russell. And Huxley, who started out as a satirist, veered into mysticism and even became an advocate for the (careful)use of hallucinogens. But overall, Anglos have been a people who liked to tidily keep things apart. (Consider the Noel Coward/David Lean movie BLITHE SPIRIT, which, while accepting the premise of ghosts and afterlife, maintains a wry and blase tone throughout.)
This is also true of GHOST GOES WEST.
Even the way the English talked put extra emphasis on form, precision, posture, and etiquette. From a young age, British kids were taught to express themselves properly and precisely as if talking itself was a form of table manners. If something couldn’t be expressed literally, Brits were expected to master the art of irony, which was different from mere sarcasm that any lazy-minded person could express. Not only were the classes neatly divided in traditional Britain but so was intellect from emotions. The advantage of this was social order and neatness. The downside was the feeling of both social and psychological compartmentalization. The main joke of MONTY PYTHON skits is how Brits maintain the facade of propriety even when things are going utterly mad all around them. If an Italian or Greek sees something untoward or weird, he flips out and screams and shouts, which is only natural. But when a Brit sees something nutty, a part of him wants to sound the alarm, but another side ― his intellectual and/or cultivated side ― wants to maintain composure. This is why, when a ship is sinking, a Greek or Italian captain is apt to act more naturally human. He’s scared and tries to save his ass by being the first to get on the lifeboat. The British captain, on the other hand, keeps his panicky side separate or compartmentalized away from his intellectual or honorable side. So, he allows the passengers to get on the lifeboat first and is willing to go down with the ship. Of course, such honor system didn’t prevail among all Britains; it was essentially an aristocratic and haute bourgeois ideal, and in a way, the willingness of such people to sacrifice themselves was as seen as proof of their class superiority, as if to say, “while you women, children, and rabble only have survival on your minds, I, a upper crust gentleman, live by higher ideals.” This is why the character of LORD JIM could never be Italian or Greek for whom ‘conscience’ and ‘objective self-control’ are eternally foreign concepts. And it is telling that LORD JIM was written by the ‘Polack’ Joseph Conrad since it probably took a foreigner to observe Britishness with a kind of fascination. (After all, Poles haven’t exactly been the most honorable people on Earth. When a ‘Polack’ yelled ‘fire’, he was just being stupid, not honorable.) The odd paradox of British life was that the elites were more honorable and generous on the premise that the class system would remain rigid and strict. Thus, British sense of fairness was built on social unfairness. On the condition that the masses of Brits accepted the superiority of the elites, kept their heads low, and called their social superiors “gov’nor”, the elites felt obliged to reciprocate by living up to the high-minded ideals that defined and justified their class superiority. The elites had to be fair from above because the masses accepted the unfairness from below. Of course, this social contract was broken after WWII when the masses voted for Labor. With the state providing all sorts of free stuff for the masses, the masses didn’t have to look up to the elites anymore for generosity, leadership, or as social models. The masses got into the habit of thinking in terms ‘gimme mine’. And the elites, having lost their confidence with the loss of the British Empire, became demoralized, delusional, or radicalized. And without an empire to take pride in, British masses had little on their mind but “what’s mine?” In time, the British masses got so wild, unruly, and bloody shupid that it made no sense for the elites to live up to any kind of ideal. British society became more fair, but the elites abandoned their sense of fairness since who the hell wants to go down with the ship to save a bunch of disgusting drunken yobs who are either into soccer mayhem or having sex with Jamaican Negroes? In a way, Thatcher’s remark, “there’s no such thing as a ‘society’” was a reaction to the social changes that had taken over Britain. With the rise of the welfare state and power of unions, many British thought the world owed them everything. They got lazier and lazier, sat on their asses and said “gimme what’s mine”. The social contract that had once existed between the high and the low was gone. The masses had become shameless and vulgar. In the past, they could be vulgar amongst themselves but if they saw a gentleman and lady walk by, they’d change their tone, tip their soiled hat, and say, “Aye guv’nor. Evenin’ Missus.” But in new Britain, the vulgar masses acted like neo-barbarians addicted to trash pop culture and welfare handouts. If THIS is society, Thatcher wanted none of it. Since the attitude of the lazy masses was “gimme what’s mine”, Thatcher’s message was there was no more need for noblesse oblige. The intelligent and industrious owed nothing to the lazy masses and should just keep their money. Thus, British society became more divided and hostile. The lazy and poor just sat on their butts, acted like louts, and shouted “gimme what’s mine” whereas the rich and intelligent got interested in nothing but money. Thatcherism might have worked if most of the big money was made by honest businessmen, but that was not so. Since British workers had become so worthless, it didn’t make much sense to build factories. So, most of the money was made in finance, the realm of hideously devious Jews.
The Anglo-American, unlike the Anglo-Brit, was a freer and emotionally fuller creature. His mentality and habits were less compartmentalized. But all such comparisons are relative, and in comparison to the Jew, the Anglo-American was a rather stiff creature. Though more expressive and freer than their European cousins, Anglo-American preferred to keep sexuality and emotions away from his mind and intellect. Some say this is due to the Puritanical mind-set of American history, but there seems to have been plenty of saloons with loose women in the Wild West. But given that the West was eventually settled and civilized, the New England values sort of prevailed there too. Anglo-Americans not only separated mind and emotion but mind and hands, which may explain why America was late to get on the heavy-duty intellectual bandwagon that got started in 19th century Germany. Americans favored technology made by hands over theories created by the mind. Thus, America produced many great inventors of useful products, but most of the great scientists who won Nobel Prizes came from Germany in the early 20th century. At any rate, in any Western movie, there are distinct archetypes: lawmen and outlaws, respectable women and whores, sodbusters and ranchers, etc. This need for neat categorization also affected how Anglos and Anglo-Americans saw Race. Even as whites rubbed shoulders with all sorts of folks, they preferred to maintain the difference between white man and ‘Injun’, white man and ‘nigger’, white man and ‘beaner’, white man and ‘chink’, white man and ‘drunken Irish’ ― though once the Irish got a better handle on their drinking, they came to be more acceptable as bona fide white folks. And even as Anglo-Brits set up a huge worldwide empire, they insisted on maintaining a distinction between white people and ‘coons’. Anglos were so obsessed with such categorization that they referred to the entire German people as ‘Huns’ during World War I, as if the ‘Krauts’ were all descendants of Attila. While there was a certain advantage to such mental habits, it could also be stifling, rigid, and, worst of all, open to charges of moral hypocrisy, i.e. the Anglos were bringing the world together with universal ideals of progress and liberty but snobbily and even brutally lording over other peoples.
Jews understood the strengths and weaknesses of Anglo/American power very well. Among the Jews ― at least modern ones ― , the categories were far more fluid. The God according to the Old Testament tells the Jews that their destiny will be one of prophets and profits. And having survived as nomads for 1000s of yrs, Jews perfected both the way of self-preservation (particularism) and integration(universalism). And there was no neat dividing line between the objective and the subjective in Jewish thought and culture. And there was no neat dividing line between spiritual and physical. Jews practiced universalism as particularists; Jews worshiped the spirituality of God but also obsessed over their puds as gifts from God to be ‘fruitful and multiply’; Jews came to regard intellect as an angry extension of God’s will and purpose. Thus, when Jews think, they don’t think APART FROM their emotions but think THROUGH their emotions. Take William F. Buckley vs Alan Dershowitz. Buckley tried to think and talk as if he was above or separate from his emotions whereas Dershowitz, as brilliant and deft as he was, fueled his thoughts with the intensity of his emotions.
And even the hands are fused with the brains and pud in the Jew, which is why the Jew will gesticulate wildly as he drives home a point. This is one reason why Anglo-Americans have lost to Jews. Jewish thought has more personality, more color, more character. Compare the relatively staid manner of David Duke with wily style of Brother Nathanael Kapner:
Anglo-Americans, even if freer and fuller than Anglo-Brits, are relatively compartmentalized emotionally and intellectually vis-a-vis the Jew. The Wasp turns off his emotions and tries to rely on evidence and logic to make his argument; he tries to be fair and ‘objective’; he may resort to wit but keeps it as dry as possible. (There are, of course, forceful personalities like Rush Limbaugh, but generally, when a Wasp turns on his emotions, his intellect is shut off, and vice versa. Wasps go for either intellectual elitism or vulgar populism but seem unable to bridge the two modes, which is why American conservatism has Robert Bork on the one hand and Sarah Palin on the other. Jews, in contrast, maintain elitist intellect even as they play to the crowd.) The Jew will use evidence and logic and all that stuff, but he’s never ‘objective’ in style, nor does he keep his mind separate from his emotions. This is why it’s misleading to say Stanley Kubrick’s films are cold and mechanical. There’s a great sense of control and mastery but the vision and imagination were powered by his massive balls. His films have been filtered and shaped through his mind, but they’re as much the works of his pud. LOLITA and DR. STRANGELOVE are about sex to a large measure. Kubrick surely heard of the fact that the Jewish scientists working on the Manhattan Project were horny as hell and humping ho’s when not crunching numbers; in a way, the men of the highest intellect were working on the biggest orgasm in history. Thus, the character of Doctor Strangelove is a Freudian Nazi-Jew. In 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, it’s like David Bowman is mind-and-butt-fuc*ed by extraterrestrials. The boot-camp scene in FULL METAL JACKET is about the gun as an extension of the penis ― just like Kubrick’s intellectual films were the extensions of his intensely throbbing cock. He might as well have been named Pube-rick.
Anyway, if the thematic moral core of the Western is ‘need’ ― due to survivalist circumstances of frontier life or city-on-the-hill idealism of starting anew ― , ‘greed’ has been central to the gangster genre. It’s interesting that even Westerns about outlaws focus more on ‘need’ than ‘greed’. After all, in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Billy is presented as someone who steals only enough to get by and have some fun. In contrast, the big ranchers and big businessmen are presented as wanting to control and own the entire territory ― and sometimes starting major cattle wars among themselves with hired killers to do the dirty work. And though the Warren Beatty character of MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER runs a brothel and has ambitions, he’s endearing precisely because he has a human touch and will sacrifice everything for an ounce of personal dignity. In the end, his pride and his girl matter more than money. And in SHANE, we side with the ‘sodbusters’ who eke out a living from honest toil over the ranchers who wanna keep the territory ‘open’ and ‘free’ mainly so that they can run wild and push out all the competitions ― a kind of greedy ‘freedom’ for themselves, somewhat akin to the Southern idea that states should be free to govern their own affairs without interference from the federal government when, in fact, this ‘freedom’ really amounted to white people’s ‘freedom’ to deny equal freedom to blacks. (Of course, white folks had good reasons to fear the Negro, and indeed social equality between whites and blacks is bound to cause serious problems since blacks are stronger and more aggressive than whites. But then, Southern whites should have made an honest argument about race that Northern whites could understand and sympathize with. Instead, Southern whites talked and acted like louts, and so it became easy for Jewish liberals to frame the racial conflict in simple terms of redneck thugs oppressing helpless Negroes as shown in the movie TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD.)
The gangster movie simply cannot work on ‘need’ alone. The classic gangster is never content with what he has. He always has to have more, and his greed is such that he’s willing to do anything to get his way. In a way, the Western and the gangster movie show two sides of capitalism: Main Street capitalism and Wall Street capitalism. The Western ― or at least the traditional Western ― idealizes the business community that services people’s basic needs. A Western will often begin in some violent town without much in the way of law & order. Thugs and outlaws run wild and do as they please. But an idealistic and/or tough gunman rides into town and fixes things up so that the good folks of the town can build a decent life. And this decency owes as much to a sense of community as individuality. The ideal isn’t for someone to get rich at expense of others but to be a productive member of the larger community. Thus, everyone has his sense of limits, and everyone’s life is centered around the church. There’s the saloon and brothel, to be sure, but there’s a sense that the West is moving from wilderness to civilization. The Western hero is often a rough/tough man, but he possesses an inner grace that ‘sacrifices’ the interests of his own kind for the good of the community. Thus, the John Wayne character in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE has much to lose by the coming of civilization, but he accepts the new order as more befitting to the woman he loves ― even if he has to lose her in the process. The Western hero shares with the gangster a penchant for violence and thirst for blood, but the difference is the former uses violence for a higher good. In a way, he is self-negating as the new order he fights for will no longer have much use for his kind once it’s in place. The classic gangster, in contrast, uses violence to serve himself and only himself. (Yet, in another way, the gangster has a closer link to civilization than the Western hero does. The Western hero is the good barbarian who vanquishes the bad barbarian in order to make the wilderness safe for civilized folks. The gangster, as barbaric as he may be, is a kind of parody of civilization, thus part of civilization. The gangster is not an entirely outside force ― like the outlaw or Indian savage ― who raids civilization but an agent within civilization that imitates aspects of civilization to parasitically suck it dry. Outlaws or Indian savages are like locusts or mosquitos ― dangerous to civilized folks but external threats. Gangsters are like cancer cells that imitate ordinary cells, all the while growing into a malignant tumor and sucking precious blood from the healthy cells. The Western outlaw is a nasty character, but you can always tell one apart from civilized folks. He shares some common attributes with the Western hero ― toughness, wildness, recklessness, etc ― , but then, this is why the Western hero must be self-sacrificing. In killing the outlaw, he’s killing the darker demons within himself. Violence, even when used for good, has a way of getting out of hand, which is why Eisenhower gave that famous speech about the military-industrial complex. He had no doubt about America being on the right side of history in WWII and in the Cold War, but he feared that even violence-in-name-of-good would fall into the trap of violence-for-violence-sake. And he was right in the sense that soon after the end of the Cold War, US sought new enemies in the Muslim world; and in the future, American foreign policy warriors could make China and Russia out to be the new big enemies. And whatever moral merit there may have been in the Jewish fight for self-respect and self-preservation in the1950s and 1960s, Jewish aggressiveness has turned into a massive industrial complex that seeks to control the hearts and minds of everyone; indeed American and European politics isn’t about pro-Jewish forces versus anti-Jewish forces but about pro-Jewish power A versus pro-Jewish power B. Both Democrats and Republicans are going out of their way to show that it is more pro-Jewish than the other side though, to be sure, Republicans try much harder since most Jews are Democrats; given the anti-conservatism among Jews, the logical thing would be for American conservatives to be anti-Jewish, but that is not an option; Americans have been brainwashed to worship Jews, and so even if Jews were to rape your mother and kill your children, you cannot bash Jews but must do your best to convince Jews that you are on their side; we WORSHIP Jews. Because of the nature of violence and aggression, the Western hero feels a need to ride away or fade away after his great deed has been accomplished. Shane, after killing the bad guys, rides away. Ethan ― of THE SEARCHER ― remains outside after Debbie ― Natalie Wood ― has been brought home. And John Wayne character in MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE recedes into nothingness after the killing of Liberty Valance ― Lee Marvin. It’s more ironic in HIGH NOON, where the Gary Cooper character took his stand against Frank Miller not for the good of the town but for his own pride. Indeed, HIGH NOON was somewhat ‘subversive’ in questioning whether so-called civilization was really worth saving. After all, nearly all the ‘good’ and ‘decent’ people of the town seem to be either cowardly, selfish, petty, pious, hypocritical, opportunistic, unappreciative, cynical, or dastardly. In a way, HIGH NOON presaged the rise of the gangster within civilization. Though the Gary Cooper character did his best to make the town safe for ‘good’ ‘decent’ folks, most people don’t seem to have the wherewithal to keep the town good and decent out of their own volition.
The people of the town cower before Frank Miller like most Americans today cower before Jewish and gay power. People talk and act heroic when authority is securely on their side, but when they have to risk their own necks, most people would rather act the sheep than the hero. Frank Miller arrives in town as an outlaw and, had he won, could have gone on to become something like a gangster who doesn’t assault the law straight on but perverts it in imitative parody. It’s like how the Henry Fonda character in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST starts out as an outlaw but tries to make the transition to a gangster. Instead of just robbing the fruits of capitalism, he stakes his claim on the capitalist tree. This is one of the differences between outlaws and gangsters. Outlaws will brag that they’re robbers whereas gangsters will often say that they’re just businessmen. To be sure, not all gangsters are the same. The kind we see in GOODFELLAS are indeed little more than modern outlaws, robbing trucks and airports. But gangsters who ran bootleg liquor during the Prohibition were indeed businessmen of sorts, even if they resorted to violent crime to gain market share.)
From the earliest times, American history had elements of the Western capitalist ethos and gangster capitalist ethos. And both appealed to the masses since established businesses of plantation farms and elite connections were shut off to most laymen. For most Americans, the hope was to lay claim to a piece of territory in the Westward expansion and create a new life of freedom and independence. Thus, the capitalist ethos of the Western existed long before the white man actually began conquering the Wild West. Most Americans were not looking to get rich in their search for a ‘world of their own’ during the Westward expansion. They wanted a roof over their head, land to grow food on, and maybe schools and churches when their community grew large enough. And if the harvests were good in a particular year, maybe there would be extra to mail-order a nice hat for the missus and new shoes for the kids. Western capitalist ethos had as moral premise the view that one could be happy with the basic things of life. One didn’t need to be top of the world. There was, to be sure, an element of adventurousness in the Western capitalist ethos ― as in the movie CIMARRON ― , but the Western hero often moved further west not necessarily for bigger riches but to leave behind the civilized world of riches(most of which belonged to the established elites). It was not necessarily ambition for more riches but ambition of more freedom that motivated Americans who joined in the Westward expansion. Thus, the hero of CIMARRON leaves behind his family and his secure status in society to look for new frontiers even if it will most likely lead to one hardship after another. In this sense, the Western hero is someone who is willing to abandon all the wealth in the world to regain the sense of freedom, of starting anew; in that, there is a kind of moral principle. The Western capitalist ethos is still alive in many Americans. Americans who don’t believe that they need to own the world nor have the ‘best of everything’ to be happy are heirs of the Western capitalist ethos. The reason why so many Negroes are crazy is they think in terms of the ‘No Limit Nigga’. So impatient they be to own all the diamond studded bling blings in the world that they can’t sit their asses down to do anything productive. For the Negro, there is no beauty in freedom itself; instead, it’s all about “what can I have me for free?” Most Main Street Americans are content with something useful to do and a decent pay. They are not like scum Jews like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and George Soros who wanna own the entire world. The other kind of Western capitalist ethos ― the adventurous kind ― can be found in people with strong convictions in their ideas and visions. These people may wanna make a lot of money, but they’re also willing to lose everything to pursue their dreams. They are idealists first and materialists second in the sense that they will risk everything in their commitment to a dream or vision. Someone may come up with an invention and be willing to risk his entire wealth to prove its worth to the world. Or, it doesn’t even have to do with business. A person may risk his career by standing for ideas that he or she believes to be true even if it means ostracization and blacklisting by rest of society. Even when the world is against him, he stands his ground like Will Clark(Gary Cooper) in HIGH NOON. In business, some people don’t just go for the fast buck but stick to their long-term plan out of the conviction to do it right. THE WILD BUNCH is a great film because Peckinpah took the trouble to do it right instead of just relying on the true-and-tried method of making a successful Western. Such outlook was shared by Steve Jobs who pursued ideas ignored by or invisible to most people. Some people strain to perfect the best possible version of what already exists while others strive to create what doesn’t exist.
Whether it’s Main Street-ism or Adventurous True-Believer-ism, there is a moral component to the Western capitalist ethos. The gangster capitalist ethos, in contrast, ranges from amoral to immoral. (Ayn Rand strangely combined the two, at least in FOUNTAINHEAD. There is an idealistic and moral component to Howard Roark’s utter commitment to his vision. He has his own ideas and refuses to compromise for personal gain. He’d rather be poor and remain true to his vision than rake in big bucks by vulgarizing it for mass consumption. In that sense, he’s like the Western hero who, out of his love for freedom, will risk life and limb to venture westward into new territories. He’s an adventurer/explorer/discoverer. But Rand also admired the ‘radical’ businessman who was willing to do anything to rise to the top and lord over the economy as a tycoon ― the newspaper giant in the movie. Thus, on the one hand, there is the hero who’s willing to remain poor to behold the purity of his vision, and on the other hand, there is the giant who’s willing to compromise any principle to rake in as much cash as possible. There’s the cowboy and the gangster. Yet, Rand finds a way that the two can be reconciled. The modern visionary cowboy has the vision but not the money; the modern gangster tycoon has tons of cash but no vision. But, what if the tycoon were to rake in all that cash by pandering to the dumb masses but then use that cash to help realize the pure vision of the cowboy? It’s a powerful ideal, but given that rich folks have supported the ‘visions’ of Andy Warhol and the like, hardly foolproof. On the other hand, the gangster producer Arnon Milchan did make it possible for Sergio Leone to direct ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. And gangster tycoons the Shaw Brothers gave Ridley Scott the chance to direct BLADE RUNNER. Hollywood acts like a gangster to rake in the cash, but the money is sometimes used to fund the artist as cowboy maverick. So, there are always exceptions to the rule.) For those with the gangster mentality, enough is never enough. It’s like what Henry Hill says in THE GOODFELLAS about all the ‘suckers who work at 9 to 5 jobs’. And in the end, when his family is stashed away in a quiet little town under the witness protection program, he complains that his life is so boring without the glamour and easy cash that had come with the gangster life. And in Negro-dominated schools all across the nation, countless black kids sit in class with a bored look on their faces as if they be thinking, “Man, dis faggoty, honkey ass shit be boring?” The Negro kid just can’t wait to burst out of class, turn on some rap music, and fantasize himself as some diamond-studded gangster with fancy ho’s sucking his cock as he flashes a gold-plated pistol in his hand as his ass is being driven across town in a white limousine. But then, one doesn’t have to be a gangster to think like a gangster. Gangsterism is as much a mind-set as a way of life. Among politicians, there are those who enter government to be public servants; they have some of the Western ethos. Consider Ron Paul; like him or not, he’s a man who sticks to his principles. But there are gangsters like No Limit Mulatto Obama who want instant power and glory, and his path was made easy by Jewish gangsters for whom enough is never enough. Take Rahm Emanuel who was born with a gangster mentality and favored/promoted by financial Wall Street gangsters of the Zionist cabal. Jews on Wall Street who will pull any dirty trick to rake in more, and if they make the wrong bet, they claim to be ‘too big to fail’ and rob Main Street with ‘bail out’ money procured through the government that is controlled by Jews. People who operate ‘legally’ but with the gangster mentality are ‘gangsterites’. They don’t deal in narcotics or hire assassins to bump people off ― though their use of police and military to silence the opposition comes close ― , but they approach money and power with the gangster mind-set. Enough is never enough. They’re utterly ruthless and pitiless in their pursuit of self-interest. They have no scruples. They are shameless. They are filled with arrogance and contempt for humanity. They use the Law to lie, cheat, and hustle all they want ― like the Jewish lawyer played by Sean Penn in CARLITO’S WAY. Even Jewish morality has turned into a form of gangsterism, what with ‘leaders’ like Abe Foxman of ADL and Morris Dees the Sleaze of $PLC(and their collusion with big media owned by fellow slimy Jews). As Norman Finkelstein has said, the Holocaust has turned into a gangster industry used by dirty Jews to threaten and silence people all over the world and to extort easy cash from nations like Germany that must apologize forever. And the cry of ‘antisemitism’ is no longer about sounding the alarm about real dangers to Jews but about suppressing any criticism of Zionist oppression of Palestinians. When Benjamin Netanhayu comes here and talks to American presidents like a mafia boss giving orders to underlings or when Congress gets on its feet and praises him like Stalin-the-gangster-communist, who can deny that gangsterism is a big part of the Jewish mind-set. And indeed, it was the Jewish example, leadership, and sponsorship that have encouraged and allowed the gay mafia to act likewise. It’s gotten to a point where if a beauty pageant contestant opposes ‘gay marriage’, she will be smeared and attacked by the entire media(run by filthy hideous Jews), and her private life will be splashed all over the tabloids(also owned by disgusting Jews). Jews may not do most of their killing with guns, but they operate their media-mafia empire to character-assassinate anyone they don’t like. America has become a Jewish Gangster Paradise. If Jews say “kiss my ass”, you have to kiss their ass. If Jews say, “kiss my ass and blow the gay guy”, you have to kiss their ass and suck the gay cock. Jews keep making offers we can’t refuse. The cowboy has been killed by the Jewish gangster, and Main Street has been robbed by Wall Street. Worse, main street morality has been corrupted by Jewish control of popular culture which fills TV sets across this country with little more than interracist, gay, and ugly-Jewish filth.
The gangsterish way of the Jew was perfectly illustrated by Max(James Woods) in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. For Max, enough was never enough ― and much the same was true of Debra(Elizabeth McGovern), who had to have it all. There are such individuals among all nations and peoples, but some peoples are more gangsterish than others. Even the Jewish Mother is gangsterish in her manipulation of her son’s emotions. They raise their sons to be hostile, vain, tribal, and ruthless ― to conquer the world for their mothers. It’s the Bloody Vendetta of the Weasel Mother. Most Swedish-Americans want a good life but don’t wanna own the world, but for the Jews, the world is not enough. Worse, Jews are never honest about their power-lust. They operate like alien creature in John Carpenter’s THE THING; they pretend to be ‘one of us’. When British gained control over much of the world, they honestly admitted it was about British power and glory. The Nazis, as vile as they were, openly admitted it was about ‘Aryan’ power. But Jews will gobble everything up but then pretend they’re just a peace-loving and harmless minority trying to get along with other people on the basis of fairness. Though Jews were as involved in organized crime in Americas as much as the low-life Italian-Americans, they played it more low-key, which is why most Americans associate organized crime with the Italian mafia but rarely with Jews. And even in movies about Jewish gangsters, the thugs are often played by handsome goyim like Warren Beatty(in BUGSY), thereby prettifying the face of Jewish criminality. (Though Barry Levinson’s AVALON was not about gangsters, notice that many of the Jewish characters there were also played by handsome non-Jews.) Of course, not all Jews are like this. It’s possible that the majority of Jews are decent law-abiding folks who’ve honestly earned their station in life and don’t harbor ruthless ambitions to ‘rule the world’. But even ordinary Jews almost never stand up to the foulness of the Power Jews and just go along with the program, whether it’s bailout for Wall Street Jewish sharks, support for Zionist thuggery against Palestinians, the ass-boofing push for ‘gay marriage’, and the vilification of any white American who opposes the insanity of Open Borders and out-of-control non-white immigration. So, even non-gangsterish Jews aid and abet the gangsterism of the Power Jews. And unlike goy dummies who support their leaders out of ignorance or stupidity, most Jews tend to be smart and learned; and therefore, they are knowingly supportive of Jewish vileness. Most Jews knew of the sheer hypocrisy of the Jewish community attacking Apartheid South Africa while supporting the terrorist state of Israel, but the charade was maintained for the sake of Jewish power. Jews are, at once, the most shifty and the most loyal people on Earth. They are loyal to Jewish power and willing to do anything ― no matter how sneaky, shifty, dirty, and low-down ― to further Jewish power. Though Jews are intellectual and theoretical on all manner of subjects, the real Jewish ideology is power-for-Jews. In the end, it all comes down to ‘more power for us’. This is why so many fervently communist Jews became fervently capitalist Jews. This is why so many fervently universalist Jews are also fervently nationalist Zionist Jews. This is why Jews who ‘proudly’ stood up against the ‘evils’ of South African apartheid can rationalize the much harsher Jewish policies against Palestinians. This is why Jews who decry inequality in American keep amassing fortunes and influence to become the richest, most powerful, and most unequal people in America. Notice how the gangsterish Jews rig the system to grow richer and richer but then blame GOP’s opposition to higher taxes for social inequality. Jews have promoted neo-liberalism and globalism to rake in ever larger share of wealth from around the world at the expense of everyone else, but they would have us believe that the main reason for economic inequality is Republican party’s opposition to taxation. If Jews were really concerned about inequality, they would address the SOURCE or the CORE REASONS for the ‘problem’. Instead, Jews rig the system to hog everything and then bitch and whine that the system is forbidding them to be generous. Granted, Jews are not the only ones who play this game. Warren Buffett does it too. If Buffett really feels he has too much money, why didn’t he just retire after he made his first 10 million? Who forced him to rake in tens of billions? But then, is it any surprise that Buffett, like Soros, made his fortune in finance? The very nature of modern investing is ‘Jewish’ even when goyim are involved. They are all a bunch of gangsters.
Even so, not all gangsters are alike ― at least in the popular imagination. The classic gangster of the genre has something of the cowboy in him. Though driven by ego and greed, there is a kind of black idealism and adventurism in his commitment to live hard and die young. He’s a bad guy and knows he’s a bad guy. He wants respect for his power but he’s not out to fool the world that he’s respectable. He made his fortune by force and expects to be met with and brought down by force. There is a kind of dogged integrity in his commitment to crime, like an athlete out to crush his opponents but also ready to be crushed by the ‘better man’. However tawdry and vulgar, there is an element of romanticism in this kind of gangster.
In contrast, there is the gangster who’s out for respectability, who tries to pass for legitimate. Such archetype is to be found in the Western too, especially in William Wyler’s BIG COUNTRY where a cattle baron with a fair amount of dirt-and-blood on his hands tries to win acceptance from the respectable elites of the community. (His dance party is interrupted by the white trash patriarch Burl Ives character who taunts him as a phony.) But such kind of gangsterism may have been more justifiable in the West since, in the absence of law and order, men had to be tough and rely on the barrels of guns. They played rough in a rough world.
Gangsterism of the city is more disturbing and upsetting since big cities are supposed to be the very centers/cores of civilization. If the very core is in bed with gangsterism, what hope is there for the rest of civilization? As they say, fish rots from the head. Thus, if an element of gangsterism may have been necessary in the Wild West in the absence of laws, unfettered gangsterism in the city is a gratuitous perversion of the Law from within. If most American cities managed to fend off domination by gangsters, this cannot be said of Latin American nations where gangsters pretty much took over the whole system. The Anglo-American success in suppressing excessive organized crime owed largely to Wasp principles and idealism but also to ethnic differences and conflicts. For Wasps, organized crime often meant Jewish, Italian, and Irish power. Gangsters were seen as the alien/immigrant dangers. Wasps were also alarmed that the non-Anglo way of doing ‘business’ often fused gangsterism with government. Irish-American politicians ran their wards like gangster fiefdoms. Italian-Americans were worse. Chinese-Americans relied more on Chinese gangsters than on the police. But to be fair, non-Anglos sometimes relied on gangsterism because they felt they couldn’t get a fair shake from the Anglo-American powers-that-be. THE GODFATHER begins with an Italian-American father explaining how he’d sought justice from Anglo-American court system but the judge gave the privileged young men who attacked his daughter only a slap on the wrist. And if you’re a Muslim-American, you can’t expect any kind of fairness from US foreign policy that is controlled by vile Zionist Jews. If Israel rapes your people and you, as a Muslim, ask for justice from Americans, Americans will not only refuse to give even a slap on the Jewish wrist but spit in your ‘Muzzie’ face. Then, it’s no wonder that some Muslims gravitate toward ‘extremism’. America doesn’t play it fair in the conflict between Jews and Muslims. If Muslims kill a few Jews, it’s big big news. But if Jews kill many more Muslims, there’s just silence ― or even enthusiastic support for Jewish mass killing of ‘Muzzies’. Especially American conservatives, who would never use words like ‘nigger’, ‘kike’, and ‘faggot’, openly go on and on about ‘Muzzies’ and ‘ragheads’.
Though Anglo-Americanism had a lot to do with the suppression of excessive gangsterism in America, Jews also played a role. Always two-faced, Jews were among the most pro-gangsterish and most anti-gangsterish people in America. They were pro-gangsterish since, as ambitious power-hungry immigrants, they were looking for a fast-track ― often illegal or extra-legal ― to get a leg up on society. Also, by their nature, Jews have loved playing the game(of power), and in that sense, gangsterism for Jews wasn’t just about money but a kind of mental hobby. Jews were fascinated with creative ways to gain power and money just like Bobby Fischer was obsessed with chess and David Mamet with con-men ― and Henry Kissinger with diplomacy. For Jews, laws and rules don’t exist simply to be obeyed; they exist to be toyed with, warped, and bent for Jewish power and for the sheer pleasure of playing the game. The Jewish mind is ever restless and cannot accept anything for what it is. This is why two-faced Jews will sometimes defend a certain position on the sacrosanct principles of the Constitution, only to do an about-face and decry the Constitution as a archaic piece of paper written by ‘dead white males’ that no modern society can take seriously. So, racial discrimination against blacks had to be ended because it went against Constitutional principles, but ‘affirmative action’ is necessary even if it violates the Constitution in the name of modern ‘social justice’. So, blacklisting of communists in the 1950s was wrong because it violated Constitutional protections, but political correct witch-hunts of ‘racists’ are necessary since the First Amendment is outdated. There is nothing the Jew doesn’t do in bad faith.
The Jew is, by nature, gangsterish, but he is also highly intelligent. The Jew has few scruples but has the ability to succeed through scruples; Jews have the means to succeed on the basis of meritocracy over all other peoples. Since Jews can succeed on merit alone, they fear the breakdown of rule of law. Without the assurance of the Law, the more numerous goyim can bend the Law anyway they want to favor themselves over the smarter Jews. Among gangsters, even though Jewish gangsters were more talented and smarter, Italian-American gangsters sometimes muscled out the Jews in the way that lions muscle out hyenas from their own kill. Though Las Vegas was largely the invention of Jews, Italian-Americans for a time gained a huge stake because they had more guns. Thus, protection of the Law was necessary for Jews to succeed against the dumber goyim. Without rule of law, there could be no meritocracy, which would favor the smarter Jews. Therefore, Jews sided with Anglo-Americans to curtail the power of Italian-American hoodlums ― not because Jews were offended by organized crime but because intelligent Jewish gangsters sometimes got wiped out be dumber but meaner ‘greaseball’ gangsters. If organized crime had been utterly dominated by Jewish-Americans, Jews may have been less eager to support the rule of law. Consider that most American Jews defended the Jewish-Russian gangster-oligarchs who came to power in the 90s; American Jews hate Putin the Russian gangster but felt proud of Jewish gangsters who ran Russia like their private property during the Yeltsin years. There are lots of Jewish gangsters in Israel, but the Israeli government works hand-in-hand with them, and the American media controlled by Jews don’t cover the extent of the Jewish role in international organized crime. What do Jews care if Jewish gangsters enslave Russian and Ukrainian women in Israeli brothels and exploit them as pieces of meat to be sold to scummy African, Asian, Middle-Eastern, and Jewish men from all over the world?
Another reason why Jews became less enamored of organized crime in America was they were smart enough to rise through the ranks of mainstream society and take over elite institutions. Why be a criminal gangster when you can be a legal gangster? Why be Hyman Roth when you can be Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod? Or Marc Rich, the tycoon scumbag pardoned by Billy Boy Clinton who even sold his daughter’s shikse poon to the Jewish overlord clan? Or all the weasels at Goldman Sachs who rake in billions by hoodwinking the rest of us and ‘legally’ too? The obvious question is why did Jews stick to the mind-set of gangsterism if they could succeed meritocratically? It was because meritocracy has its limits. It favors the more talented and more intelligent, but it still puts the brakes on power. Honesty and integrity are central to meritocracy, and that means Jewish power will have to be scrutinized like all other forms of power and function within its limits of talent ― though Jews are smarter than non-Jews, there’s a limit to Jewish ability like there’s a limit to everything. Jews weren’t content with limited meritocratic power. They want ALL the power. It’s like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook could have done well for himself on a purely meritocratic basis, but he wanted much more. He wanted everything, and so he played the geek gangster and tricked and stabbed people all around him. It’s like some athletes are bound to succeed meritocratically, but mere success may not be enough. They must win the championship ‘forever’, and so they’ll resort of all manner of fouls and juicing to beat out the competition. Similarly, Jews don’t just want to succeed on the basis of merit but employ every dirty trick in the book to amass total power.
It’s like Jews once used to push for total and equal freedom of speech. And so, in the 50s and 60s, many people were fooled into believing that Jews only wanted equal fairness for all sides to speak their piece and be heard. But once Jews amassed more power, the ideal of fairness of free speech was no longer enough. Jews decided use the abusive power of political correctness to silence all opposition to Jewish/Zionist orthodoxy. When Jews were down, many of them used meritocracy to rise up. But once they rose up, their elevated status in society wasn’t enough. They had to have total power over the rest of humanity, and they were going to use whatever means to gain and secure it. This is why Jews are dangerous. They have the meritocratic skills to succeed on the basis of ability but also the gangsterist will to hog all the power. Thus, even Jews who gained power and wealth fairly will use foul methods to gain even more power and wealth(that they do not deserve). Notice how Jewish feminist bitches whine about the exploitation/degradation of women and how Jewish male hustlers in porn use white women as cumbuckets. How could this be? How could one bunch of Jews attack exploitation of women while another bunch of Jews exploit women? Why don’t Jewish feminist bitches denounce the Jewish role in porn(and slave-prostitution in Israel)?
To understand the Jews, one must look into their soul. The Jewish mind sends out a lot of contradictory and mixed signals to confuse a lot of people, but if one peers into the Jewish soul, there is the gangsterish lust for Power-for-Jews. So, whether it’s the Bolshevik Jewish gangsters clad in black leather and killing millions of Slavs, the Jewish Wall Street gangsters robbing us blind and promoting non-white immigration to destroy the white race, or the filthy porn industry Jews using white women as cumbuckets and human meat orifices for disgusting Negro beasts, it all comes down to the same thing: Absolute Jewish Power. Why does Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic support the dropping of American bombs in the Middle East but also the building of mosques in America? He’s for using Christian goyim to fight ‘enemies of Israel’ in the Middle East and for using Muslim immigrants against the Christian/patriotic Right in America. And both position are for Jewish power. Thus, in order to understand the Jew, one mustn’t begin with ideology or principles for such will always morph in the minds of Jews in accordance to the needs of Jewish power. One must peer into the Jewish soul and find the dark lust for power and control. Within the soul of the Jew is a God complex, and modern Jews act like god-as-gangster. The main reason for the fall of White America is its mindless trust in the gangster-god-race.
White Americans simply don’t understand the mind-set of the Jew. Jews have long survived and thrived as hustlers, as confidence men. (You can learn a lot about this from the works of David Mamet.) When a con-man is out to trick you and you hand him your trust, does he show any appreciation for your faith in him? No, he despises you as a dummy. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned you may be. Confidence men, by their very nature, are out to hoodwink you. They see humanity as a race of suckers, and they despise nothing more than suckers. So, the more the gentiles respect and trust Jews, the more Jews look down, despise, and feel contempt for goyim. Gentiles seem to think Jews will love them if they just worked extra hard to be even more trusting and supportive of Jews, but it simply doesn’t work that way. The Jewish-Goy Paradox says the more goyim love Jews, the more Jews will despise goyim. It’s like the more money Mildred Pierce(Joan Crawford)gave to her rich lover, the more he hated her. Jews know they are tricksters out to fool people; they know they are con-men and even get their thrills by playing the con game. When a con man pulls off a big score, it’s like sweet orgasm. So, Jews take great pleasure in fooling and hoodwinking goyim. If the goy learned from this experience and hated the Jew, the Jew may hate the angry goy but also respect and fear the goy. But if the goyim learn NOTHING from being conned by the Jew and gets on their knees to praise the Jew and beg to kiss the Jew’s ass, how can the Jew feel any respect for goyim? It’s like raping a woman who then sees the rape as love-making and hopes to marry the rapist. How can a rapist respect a woman like that? Jews know they’re up to no good, and so when they see goyim praising Jewish foulness as the highest virtue, they feel nothing but contempt for goyim. Just look at Abe Foxman’s facial expression when the members of Congress all got up to applaud Benjamin Netanhayu a million times.
Foxman’s facial expression is one of sheer contempt for dumb stupid retarded goyim. Jews don’t con people just for material gain; they do it for the pleasure just as is the case with the confidence men in David Mamet’s films. Jews see the world as a house of game. Fiercely competitive, Jews have to prove that they’re better than anyone else especially in wit ― since Jews cannot win with fists or beauty. And it is all done in bad faith, never in good faith. This is what most goyim don’t understand. This is why George W. Bush, John McCain, and their ilk have gone out of their way to be nice to Jews only to be spat on by the Jews. And only a fool would trust David Mamet’s turn to the ‘right’. It’s just another confidence game to serve Jewish power. Obama, being a shifty and jazzy jive-ass mofo, knows the nature of the Jewish game, and he also knows Jews will sacrifice his ass at the drop of a hat if he doesn’t deliver what they demand. (Today, white goyim are essentially Jobs to the Jew-as-god. In the Book of Job, God mercilessly brings about all sorts of unwarranted misfortunes and tragedies upon Job, but Job continues to maintain his faith in almighty and supposedly perfect God. It doesn’t matter what God does to Job; Job’s faith in God is unconditional. Today, Jews have made themselves into the god of the West to be worshiped by goyim. Jews play the secular variation of both the Old Testament God and the New Testament Messiah. They are merciless in their use of power while, at the same time, pretending to have died for the sin of Western man via the historical crucifixion of the Holocaust. Thus, we are supposed to look upon Jews with both frightened awe and overwhelming pity. In America, even people who are hated by Jews are filled with crazy love for the Jews. Most American Jews feel nothing but hate and contempt for white conservatives, but white conservatives are among the most pro-Jewish people on Earth. White conservatives act before Jews the way Uncle Tomahawk ‘good Indians’ acted before white people. ‘Good Indians’, so eager to win approval from whites, would attack and kill ‘bad Indians’. Never mind that whites eventually treated ‘good Indians’ just like the ‘bad Indians’. Similarly, never mind that Jews treat ‘good whites’ ― those who suck up to Jews ― the same way they treat ‘bad whites’, but whites are so slavish before the Jew that they get on their knees and worship the Jew just as Job kept his faith in God even as God made his life worse and worse. In Job’s case, it made some sense given that God is supposed to be mysterious and unknowable, but there’s nothing really mysterious about why Jews act the way they do. They are just a very hostile, nasty, and vicious people. For thousands of years, Jews have maintained a culture of contempt and hatred toward goyim. Ancient Romans were full of pride and arrogance, but they also had a modicum of respect for other cultures and customs. Chinese saw themselves as the Middle Kingdom and thought of non-Chinese were barbarians, but they didn’t hate non-Chinese. Chinese wanted to be left alone and wanted to leave others alone. In contrast, Jews have been nomadic infiltrators, the eternal illegal aliens penetrating through all sorts of barriers to gain supremacy over the hated goyim. Romans conquered mercilessly, but when the dust settled they tolerated and respected different cultures and other gods. As long as various peoples accepted Pax Romana, Romans could be tolerant of them. Chinese, in contrast, chose to be left alone in their own world. They had no use for barbarians, and that was that. Chinese stayed at home. But Jews combined Roman-like aggressiveness with Chinese-like tribalism. Jews spread out all over the world but felt nothing but contempt for goyim. Since Jews didn’t have the numbers to take total power from goyim, they worshiped a genocidal form of religion that promised the coming of a violent Messiah who would slay all the people Jews didn’t like. It was almost as if Jews, for thousands of years, were praying for a Jewish Hitler to be sent from Heaven to destroy all peoples that Jews hated. Jews prayed, “send us a super-hero-warrior to kill all wicked goyim.” This Messiah that Jews prayed for wouldn’t just mete out justice but wipe out entire peoples. Thus, the heart of Jewish culture has been genocidal for a long time, and this mentality has come to shape the Jewish heart and mind. So, when the Messiah in the form of Jesus arrived and preached not genocide and hatred but love and forgiveness ― and the notion that Jews and goyim must respect one another as equals and live in peace ― , Jews were livid with rage. They wanted a Messiah to wipe out entire goy populations, but instead, the one that arrived preached peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding between Jews and goyim. Jews wanted Jesus killed not because he preached hate but because he preached love. The Jewish heart is filled with rage and hate. But being cunning and devious, Jews will mask their hatred and contempt with humor and wit. Thus, we laugh at Marx Brothers and Woody Allen poking seemingly harmless fun at gentiles, but, in truth, there is real contempt and hatred beneath the humor. Jews are wisecracking Hitlers. Ironically, Nazism was dangerous precisely because it mirrored the mentality of Jews. As with Jews through the ages, Nazis were both insular and aggressive: insular in their feeling of superiority and in their contempt for non-‘Aryans’ but also aggressive in their desire to penetrate the borders of other peoples and enslave them or wipe them out. Nazis were essentially ‘Aryan’ Jews. Thus, the most anti-Jewish movement in history actually mirrored the soul of the Jews. There isn’t really much difference between Adolf Hitler and Abe Foxman in terms of their world view, personality, and attitudes. And people like Timothy Noah and Steven Pinker are essentially, at the core of their personalities, Jewish Himmlers. They may seem mellow and harmless on the outside, but they are driven by a fierce Jewish will to power. How did Jews gain so much power in the modern world? It was due to the rise of technology, mass communications, psychology, and advertising. Before the rise of hyper-modernity, most communities tended to be local in politics, values, culture, outlooks. Thus, the local church and local elites mattered a lot to the community. The civilizational center had limited means to control all the outlying communities. Jews always favored the big cities and gained a good deal of power and wealth within them. But prior to the rise of hyper-modernity, the power of big cities extended only so far. But with rise of mass communications especially through radio, movies, and television, every community could be connected directly to the center. Thus, local power faded as millions of TV sets all across America received the same signals beamed across the world from cities like NY and LA. Thus, Jews suddenly gained unimaginable god-like power over all of goyim. Jews didn’t have to physically conquer land or territory. They only needed to control the big cities and the command towers of mass media in order to colonize all minds with the viral propaganda of the Jew. This is why people like MLK could be turned into instant gods in the new order. This is why young people all across America think ‘gay marriage’ predicated on two men buggering one another makes sense. Jews indeed have god-like powers, and most Americans do indeed worship the Jews. It’s gone way beyond sympathy or admiration for Jews. There is real worship. Even the Blogger Named Ernest, despite his knowledge of Jewish power and influence, worships the Jew and gives the middle finger to Palestinians ― even though what Jews are doing to whites is no different from what they did to Palestinians. Even Jared Taylor gets on his knees, bends down, and suckles on Jewish toes even though Jews are the biggest enemies of his brand of ‘white nationalism’. It’s all sad and pathetic, really. Some of this Jew-worship is due to conditioning as we’ve all been raised to feel special sympathy and love for Jews. Some of it is due to awe, as so many Jews have been intellectual, creative, and scientific giants. And some of it is opportunistic. Since Jews hold so much power, all sides ― even those despised by Jews ― hope to win some support from Jews, even if it’s crumbs. Indeed, the great irony is that the groups that most despised by Jews go out of their way to be most pro-Jewish in order to win Jewish approval ― or at least tolerance. Take Glenn Beck, who is hated by most Jews. But there is no bigger supporter of Israel and kisser of Jewish ass. Taylor’s American Renaissance has been attacked by most Jewish groups, but Taylor goes out of his way to win Jewish support. He knows that’s where the money, power, and talent is. Most Jews are Democrats, but GOP goes out of its way to accommodate Jews, what with Eric Cantor ruling the GOP Senate and Newt Gingrich getting on his knees to suck Jewish-Zionist cock. The nature of politics is people go where the money and influence are. Just as Obama learned to rise in politics by giving Jews rimjobs, white conservatives know that they won’t get anywhere without Jewish approval or tolerance. Though white conservatives know that most Jews are liberal Democrats, they know their only chance of success in politics is to be okayed by Jewish media and funded by neocon Jews. The Jewish media may favor Democrats over Republicans, but the latter may have a fighting chance if the Jewish media don’t go out of their way to destroy them. Imagine the Jewish media as a crooked referee who favors fighter A over fighter B. Fighter B cannot expect the referee to be fair and impartial, let alone favor him over fighter A, but he can at least hope for the referee to at least give him a chance to win. Thus, even though the
referee will call more fouls on fighter B than on fighter A, fighter B might still win if he fights very well. Thus, fighter B, while knowing the referee will never favor or approve of him, hopes that the referee will at the very least be tolerant of him and let him win if he fought especially well against fighter A. So, white conservatives know that it’s a rigged game, what with the Jewish media favoring liberals over conservatives, but they still hope for a win on the basis of Jewish tolerance. But in order to gain such tolerance, white conservatives must abandon so many things that are crucial to true white conservatism and interests. Anyway, such is the nature of Jewish power. Even if you don’t like Jews, you must win some degree of tolerance from Jews to have any chance of being heard and getting ahead. And it may become that way with gays as well, which may explain why there’s so feeble an opposition to stuff like ‘gay marriage’ among conservatives. Not only is the gay community most closely allied with and protected by the all-powerful Jewish community but many gays are indeed quite powerful, creative, and influential in elite circles and institutions in their own right. Thus, many conservatives who don’t like the gay agenda dare not oppose it outright and dare not discuss the true ― and gross ― nature of gay sexuality. Knowing that there’s such a paucity of creativity and thought on the conservative side, conservatives hope to at least win tolerance from the gay community. Imagine that! The world is upside down. Instead of gays seeking tolerance from normal society, conservatives ― who are supposed to stand up for normal values ― are seeking tolerance from the gay community. But conservatives deserve much of the blame. Many conservatives have opposed affirmative action in the name of ‘excellence’, but conservatives have also too often favored communal consensus and anti-intellectualism/anti-elitism as virtues. How many times have we heard during the era of Bush II that it didn’t matter that Dubya wasn’t too smart since he had the ‘right values’ and made a good ‘beer-drinking buddy’? How many times have we heard that it didn’t matter that Sarah Palin is a do-do since she’s ‘one of us’? Yes, being ‘one of us’ is fine and good, but dumbness and ignorance are still dumbness and ignorance. When Pat Buchanan thinks the character of Forrest Gump, a total dumbass, is some kind of great patriot, you know conservative culture is hopeless. Conservative culture thus encouraged and promoted mediocrity whereas liberal culture came to dominate talent and creativity. Yes, political correctness has compromised and undermined liberal culture, but political correctness hasn’t destroyed liberal culture as cultural consensus has destroyed conservative culture.)
In our modern culture filled with so much cash and techno gizmos, the ethos of ‘need’ is almost passe. People tend to think in terms of ‘rights’ than ‘needs’. In the past, people had to work to earn enough to buy clothes to wear and food to eat. This can be seen in movies or TV shows like
PLACES IN THE HEART, SOUNDER, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, HEARTLAND, EMIGRANTS, THE NEW LAND, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, MEET JOHN DOE, THE WALTONS, LITTLE MEN, and countless Westerns. The world was not one of plenty and one couldn’t just expect to be provided with stuff. Even when land was plentiful in America, Americans had to fight for it, toil to grow crops, and work very hard to have enough to eat. But with the rise of post-war prosperity and the welfare state, an attitude spread among the populace that there was plenty for everyone and, therefore, people should be entitled to all sorts of things for the hell of it. In time, it even turned into something called ‘positive rights’. Thus, Sandra Fluke, from an affluent family and attending a private university, wants tax payers to stuff her vagina with dollar bills and free contraceptives. In PLACES IN THE HEART, black women are willing to work in the fields for corn bread. In RAISIN IN THE SUN, the fat black mama is willing to clean homes to earn enough to raise her family. They had do to menial labor but there was real pride and dignity in their hard work and commitment to family. (This may be why liberals keep making stuff like THE HELP and other ‘civil rights’ movies that hark back to the ‘good ole bad ole times’. They were ‘bad ole times’ because America was more ‘racist’, but they were also ‘good ole times’ because blacks seemed more appreciative, decent, and kinder then.) Today, every jive-ass Negro ho wants everything for free. And even many of the so-called ‘black middle-class’ depends on what is essentially haute-welfare via affirmative action and government jobs to maintain their lofty status. I mean what did Michelle Obama REALLY DO to merit her privilege in life? What did Valerie Jarrett do? Not that white people ― especially the chubby necked Irish who ran city wards like fiefdoms ― didn’t pull similar stunts to get ahead, but there is a truly scandalous rift between black ability and black privilege. Many of the Irish-Americans who hogged government jobs weren’t the best and brightest, but they still knew how to run things between sips of beer and whiskey. But many Negroes don’t have a clue as to what they’re supposed to do, which is why so many Negro enterprises have to be bankrolled by whites and even run by whites when it comes to nitty gritty details of operation. Thus, a lot of ‘successful’ Negroes basically learn to coast along by latching to the white or Jewish enterprise machine ― or by ripping off white taxpayers. The Negro community is provided with free housing, free food, free medicine, free schooling, and free everything while majority of Negroes pay no taxes ― and even blacks who pay taxes made their riches through ‘affirmative action’ or haute forms of welfare made possible by ‘disparate impact’ laws. Since all their basic needs are provided for by the state, blacks are too spoiled and corrupt to think in terms of ‘need’. Most blacks are in ‘greed’ mode. Leftists seem to think greed is monopolized by the rich, i.e. greed is what leads to great wealth, therefore rich people must be greedy. But this is fallacious logic. Greed is really a state of mind. An honest non-greedy person can grow rich by doing excellent work, and a dishonest greedy person can remain poor due to lack of intelligence or industriousness. Most blacks are greedy in the sense that they want everything for free paid for by other people. Black flash mobs are greedy because they want things without paying for them. If a Hindu guy runs a 7-11 and makes enough money to rise to upper-middle class status while Negro thugs remain poor, only a stupid leftist would say the Hindu guy is greedy(for having succeeded)while the Negro thugs are not greedy because they’re poor. In fact, the Hindu guy got rich(or richer) because he played by the rules and worked at an honest job, whereas Negro thugs remain poor because they’re too lazy and greedy to do honest work. Seeking success or wanting more money is not, in and of itself, greedy. Greed is when you want more than what you’re owed or deserve, when you break the rules to gain more at the expense of others. Yes, there are tons of filthy and greedy Jews on Wall Street who will use all sorts of dirty tricks to gain more power. But most well-to-do and successful Americans are not greedy. But many poor Negroes are greedy because they be demanding everything while doing nothing. Negroes will mess up an entire school and then bitch about how their schools are not as good as white schools. But why are black schools so messed up? Because Negro parents be dumb and Negro students be wild and childish. All they’s ever be thinkin’ about is money, pussy, bling bling, and shit. And they’s thinks just becuz they be alive and shit, they be deserving all sorts of ‘rights’. This is the New Liberalism, and it is a civilization destroyer; it rots the soul. For all the yammering about ‘social justice’, it has replaced the ethos of need with appetite for greed. And this goes for white nations too. Just look at all those white yobs in the UK. If their ancestors following WWII felt some degree of gratitude for ‘free’ healthcare and the like, the young punks ― many of them are overfed and obese ― of UK today feel no gratitude for everything that’s provided to them. They just bitch and whine and scream for ‘more rights’, which means more entitlements. It’s not just the welfare-dependent underclass but middle class children who think it’s their right to get a free college education where too many of them learn nothing useful but a lot of politically correct dogma between binges of drinking, indulging in filthy pop culture, and hooking up for loose sex. After college, they don’t think, “what can I do to earn a living for myself, create wealth, and lead a responsible life?” but “what ‘rights’ ― in the form of entitlements ― is the state gonna provide for me?” Modern Western society, especially in Negro/Jewish pop-culture-drenched US and UK, not only raises kids to never grow up but encourages infantilism even among adults. When the face of modern feminism is the privileged Sandra Fluke wanting others to pay for her birth control pills ― and when opposition to her is hysterically labeled as ‘war on women’ ― , you know our society is rotten beyond belief. It’s one thing to devise a means-testing policy that makes contraceptives available to poor women ― especially since poor women having kids will burden society as a whole ― , but when affluent young women attending Ivy League colleges act like infantile brats whose moral/spiritual philosophy is ‘gimme, gimme’, what hope is there for society? We not only have VAGINA MONOLOGUES as the voice of new feminism but Vagina Monopoly as a new economic policy. Though ‘progressive’ college kids bitch and whine about rich banksters, they don’t seem to realize that the only way the masses can be provided with more freebies is by having banks come up with ever more ‘creative’ schemes to fund the ever expanding number of programs. Thus, we have the collusion of government and finance sector in both the US and EU. The welfare-finance complex is more out of control than the military-industrial one, and not just in the US but all over the West.
Initially, welfare was about need. Under FDR’s New Deal, welfare was limited to widowed women with kids. This made sense since those women could not be blamed for losing their husbands, and their kids had to be provided for. Thus, early welfare was really about meeting basic needs of genuinely needy people. But then, with Great Society came the welfare of greed, where just about every jiveass black bitch ho who dropped out of school and had tons of pickaninnies could collect more freebies. The government began to reward selfish, trashy, and childish behavior among the underclass ― and in time, as Charles Murray has pointed out in COMING APART, this rot has come to affect the white ‘working class’ as well. And things have been made worse by the rise of trashy pop culture that mocks the family, lionizes thugs and morons, promotes irresponsibility, and extols mindless hedonism as the highest virtue. FORREST GUMP, in this light, is an utterly corrupt movie. It’s as if the cosmos is one big welfare office that forever takes care over Gump and blesses him with one ‘deserved’ luck after another. In IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, a man as intelligent as George Bailey has to struggle to find the meaning of life ― nothing comes easy ― , but in FORREST GUMP, someone as dumb as Gump need never worry since the universe is one giant social worker taking care of him. Even so, at least Gump is a nice guy, but just look at the lot of American on welfare. They are not just dumb but infantile, vulgar, trashy, rude, disgusting, selfish, vain, and shameless.
We now live in a world where greed is rife at both the top and bottom and sucks the blood of the honest middle. Jews in upper echelons of media, finance, government, and law are parasites colluding amongst themselves in crony capitalism to suck on the hard work of the American middle class. Just look at Wall Street’s casino capitalism bailed out by crony state capitalism at the expense of the white middle class. And down below, we have Negroes, Illegal aliens, and white trash sucking on the middle class too. To be sure, there are some poor people facing hard times who are deserving of help, but the majority of poor folks in the US are poor because they’re greedy. Student who make trouble and fail in school are greedy. They won’t play by the rules, won’t respect the rights of others, have no appreciation for teachers who try teach them something, and etc. They are like spoiled brats who think the whole universe should revolve around their egos. And their behavior is also greedy out in the streets. Instead of respecting public peace in public space, they act like they own the streets and have the right to do as they please.
In movie theaters, they holler like drunken gorilla apes. Thus, we need a paradigm shift when it comes to the concept of greed. Greed is less about how much you have than a state of mind, an attitude. Greed is about demanding goods, services, respect, attention, and recognition without having earned it. And greed is rife in the black community. But this paradoxical relation between greed and poverty is missed by most people. Moronic leftists think that many blacks are poor because they are oppressed and don’t know the meaning of ‘greed’. No, many blacks remain poor because they are greedy. Greed alone doesn’t a civilization make. If that were true, Vikings, Mongols, and Zulus would have built great civilizations. They sure had the greed to go pillaging, rampaging, plundering, raping, and looting. Greed is a form of violence and whatever short-term gain it might produce, it leads to more destruction than construction. White Americans who conquered and settled the New World continent certainly had ambition. And some of them were indeed greedy, and sometimes greed existed side by side with virtue. (Everyone is greedy to some extent.) But the success of America owed to the Rule of Law, the virtue of Work Ethic, the ethos of Need. If White American conquerors had acted like Mongols, Vikings, or Zulus, they never would have created a great country. And even the slavery practiced by Americans was more humane and constructive than in other nations and civilizations. If slavery was the reason for American prosperity, why didn’t Africa grow rich over the tens of thousands of yrs during which slavery was practiced? Arab societies were more slave-driven than Europe or America. Why didn’t they grow rich like the West. Slavery was a prominent feature of China, India, and Japan, but why didn’t they spearhead the rise of modern industry? Slavery was even more extensive in Latin America, especially in Brazil, yet why didn’t Latin America become as rich as North America? It’s because American slavery wasn’t all about greed. White slave-owners took care of the Need of their slaves for the most part. Sure, some white slave-owners were wicked, but by and large, the white American slave-owner was a pretty decent sort. He sometimes whipped a Negro who got out of line, but wouldn’t it have been better for everyone if Mike Tyson had been whipped a few times? Because the white man knew that the Negro was stronger and more aggressive by nature, he felt it was necessary to teach the Negroes a lesson when they got out of line. Though we like to flatter ourselves that we’ve “come a long way” since the bad ole days, the opposite is also true. I mean the great shame of America today is that the scummy Negroes responsible for the Knoxville Massacre haven’t been hung from trees.
We’ve come a long way, but we’ve also gone the wrong way. More justice for blacks means more violence against whites. (Why do so many smart people believe in the radical lies of ‘anti-racism’? It’s because people adopt certain views and attitudes not only or even mainly for their veracity but for their Associative Appeal. So, whether something is right or wrong is secondary to its cultural association to the ‘right sort of people’. Why were so many educated people so ‘racist’ in the past? Because such attitudes were part and parcel of respectable society. So, even if some of those ‘racist’ views and attitudes were patently untrue, they felt precious and meaningful since the respectable members of society ascribed to them. Today, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘gay rights’ are associated with sophistication, hipness, coolness, and fashionableness; and so, people who aspire to be part of the fashionable crowd come to feel that ‘anti-racism’ and ‘gay rights’ are on the side of truth for their associative links to the most desirable social/cultural class. When social climbers think of ‘anti-racism’ and ‘gay rights’, they think less about what such things really mean ― and how much real truth they may contain ― than about how those things invoke images and sounds of fancy restaurants, cocktail parties of the elites and wanna-be elites, attractive people of power and privileged adorned in pricy clothing and etc. Thus, much of what passes for ‘truth’ wields its power via social associations. This is why so many vain rich people, even conservatives, have become so pro-gay. Since gays in arts, culture, fashion, and hair design cater to rich folks, the latter come to associate gayness with sophistication and fanciness, and that association becomes mistaken for truth. This is the Vanity of Truth. Truth in most social circles is less about what’s really true than about what looks and feels true via association to the fashionable side of life. To be sure, this has gotten more complicated over the years. In the past, the fashionable class was openly ― and honestly ― snobby, hierarchical, discriminating, and exclusive, and the rules of admittance was as much determined by class/caste as by money. Among today’s elites, it’s taboo to be openly snobby, discriminating, and exclusive. Politically and ideologically, one must be ‘inclusive’ and ‘egalitarian’ to be a member of the club. This owes to Wasp ‘guilt’ and Jewish resentment. Wasps, long having dominated American elite circles, are atoning for having excluded non-Wasps in the past. And Jews, who gained elite status by a more ‘inclusive’ policy after WWII, still remember what it felt like to be left out of top positions of society. So, the official ideology of the new elite is ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘equality’. But elitism is about the Best and the Brightest, and so not every group has made the same entrance into elite circles. Far more Jews made it to the top than blacks, Hispanics, or ‘white trash’ did. Though elite circles are officially open to all with (1) the correct kind of learning (2) lots of money (3) the right kind of skills and/or (4) the right kind of reputation, certain groups are bound to produce more successful members of the elites than other races due to the reality of racial differences. The idea of the Mexican-American community producing the kind of business, intellectual, and cultural elites as the American Jewish community is laughable. The new elitism is premised on a moral contradiction that is officially ‘inclusive’ and ‘egalitarian’ on the one hand and that is practically exclusive and discriminatory on the other. Liberals sense this, which is why the rules of inclusion in the new elite has become more moralistic, i.e. you have to have the correct moral attitudes in order to belong to the club. Liberal elites don’t much give a damn about moral values of personal nature but care a great deal about moral attitudes of ideological nature. Such moralism serves to disguise the truly exclusive nature of the modern elites. The very concept of elitism is, of course, exclusive. Though rules of admittance to the elites differ from place to place and from time to time, any kind of elite is impossible if the doors are open to all. Thus, Harvard University is the living embodiment of this liberal moral contradiction. By making so much noise about its correct moral attitudes pertaining to ‘inclusion’ and ‘equality’, liberal elites obfuscate the fact their circles are indeed very exclusive. There is affirmative action to be sure, but even this helps to cover up the truly exclusive nature of the liberal elite. If the liberal elite truly practiced color-blind meritocracy in deciding whom to include, almost everyone at the top would be Jewish or white. This fact would make the liberal elite look like hypocrites for championing ‘equality’, ‘inclusiveness’, and ‘diversity’ on the one hand while practicing white/Jewish privilege on the other. Even if every white or Jewish person made it to the top via meritocracy, it just wouldn’t look ‘fair’ for the elites to be made up mostly of Jews and whites. This is why affirmative action is useful to the elites. As a form of tokenism, it adds some color to elite circles. It makes for great photo-op, and then the elites can say, “See! We do practice ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’, so why don’t you?” Of course, when the elites say they practice ‘diversity’, it means they rub shoulders with the better-and-safer kinds of blacks while the rest of us have to integrate with the less desirable kinds. The elites get the photo-ops while the rest of us get robbed.) Granted, the passing of Need and the rise of Greed, at least in popular culture, was almost inevitable given the nature of man. Once man’s basic needs have been fulfilled, he just couldn’t help wishing for more fun and glitzy stuff. Take the movie BABETTE’S FEAST. Once the Norwegians got a taste of delicious French cooking, they wanted to have more. A cat that gets a taste of Fancy Feast doesn’t want dry food anymore. Also, this desire for better stuff isn’t necessarily greed. Indeed, human progress wouldn’t have been possible if we were all content with basic needs. Indeed, the consumer society has been the engine that led to so much innovation. Soviet Union spent a larger portion of its economy on the military, yet America had more money to spend on its own military. It was because the private sector of the American economy was more vibrant due to consumerist supply and demand. For the USSR, the military was the main thing whereas for the US, it was the gravy.
Capitalism feeds on vanity and hedonism, which, though they are related to greed, aren’t necessarily synonymous with greed. People wanna look good, feel good, and have lots of fun. But as long as they work hard and honestly and earn the money to pay for their vanity and hedonism, they aren’t being greedy. Since vanity and fun are great incentives, people in a capitalist system worked harder than in communist systems where there wasn’t much to buy in stores. Who wants to work just to stand in a long line to buy hard bread in a store with mostly bare shelves? And so, capitalism won over communism. But when the vanity and hedonism at the core of consumer capitalism is pushed to extremes, they can undermine the system of capitalism itself. Vanity and hedonism may not be deadly sins but they aren’t great virtues either. They are morally unstable and have the tendency to veer into excess. In Old America, hedonism and vanity were balanced by the ethos of need, community standards, sense of shame, and sense of limits. But once traditional restraints were lost, vanity and hedonism ran wild and free. The woman who wanted to looked good eventually became a shameless skank-ass ho slut. The guy who wanted to have some fun eventually became a drug-addled, bling bling wearing, and humping-any-ho-in-sight turd-head. Long ago, blacks were into vanity and hedonism through musical expressions like blues, jazz, and soul, but the emotions weren’t entirely about “suck my dick, ho”, “look at my bouncy booty”, and other such idiocy. There was some degree of shame and values in the black community to balance out the unstable forces of vanity and hedonism. But once black community became utterly shameless, black men turned into punkass ‘niggaz’ and black women turned into bitchass ho’s. Many blacks today are economically worse off than their ancestors. Indeed, if government were to cut off welfare payments to the Negro community, a whole bunch of Negroes would go nuts. In a way, drugs make a useful metaphor for the dangers of capitalism. Narcotics produce immediate/intense joy in the user, but they also destroy the user. It’s one thing to work one’s butt off and have a nice cool lemonade or orange juice ― or even some beer ― at the end of the day. That way, you worked and have self-respect as a productive member of society. And the orange/lemonade/beer drink make you feel good, and you earned the right to purchase and enjoy the drink. But if you use narcotics, you feel intenser joy, but the joy takes over your entire life. You become so addicted to that joy that you want it all the time. You see work not as a path to fun but as an obstacle. Since you want that narcotic high right away and all the time, you see work as a burden. The problem today is our popular consumer culture is like a narcotic drug. In its offering of orgasmic overload through mindless blockbuster movies, insane video games, and porn-music(and tons of free porn on the internet), it is a soul-destroyer. It packs so much mindless thrill into young people from a young age that they come to see both capitalism and socialism as hog heavens that ideally should dispense endless supplies of instant vanity and hedonism. Thus, vanity and hedonism do become allied with the mentality of greed. Whether it’s the rise of casinos(mostly run by Jews) all over America, the trashy celebrity culture of following the Kardashian-Trashians, or Obamacare(and call for more government programs for everyone though the deficits are sky high), young Americans seem to think the world exists to provide them with fun stuff. And don’t be fooled by the rise of popularity of Ron Paul among the young. Many young people like his message about ending the War on Drugs so they can indulge in all kind of drugs. And many kids support Paul’s call for ending the American empire because they want military spending to be transferred to programs that offers free stuff to themselves. Libertarianism, in this sense, is as corrupt as socialism and consumer-capitalism.
Some people ask if capitalism is moral, but that’s the wrong question to ask. Unlike Marxist-communism that offered the full package of economics, spirituality, history, politics, ethics, culture, arts, social life, and philosophy; capitalism is content to be only an economic theory. Capitalism never pretended to provide all the answers. Though forces of capitalism intersect and intermingle with other aspects of society, capitalism never sought to radically re-define all of society. Though there is a moral component to capitalism, it is essentially a system of economics. Thus, one must look to other spheres ― arts & culture, church life, family, civic participation, tradition, various social causes, etc ― for moral meaning in a society that is capitalist. The problem with libertarians is they tend to be radical capitalists who think free markets are the solution to all human problems and the end-all of all human meanings. Adam Smith wasn’t a libertarian, and neither were the Founding Fathers. They believed capitalism worked best in the economic sphere but they also knew that man doesn’t live on making bread alone. Thus, the forces of capitalism must be counter-balanced by other forces in non-economic spheres. If capitalism should define everything, then the Founding Fathers would have been for gambling and legalized prostitution. If everything has a price, then everything can be bought and sold. Thus, human beings themselves turn into commodities. No sane person wants that, which is why no sane person can accept radical libertarianism which turns everything and everyone into dollars and cents. Some things are beyond money, which is why we don’t allow parents to sell their children. Also, the culture of shame ― which is spiritual and social in nature ― has been necessary for the success of capitalism in the past. A culture of shame looks down on peddlers of porn, people who declare one bankruptcy after another, people in the tawdry and parasitic gambling industry, celebrities who act like whores, and so on. The power of shame is still alive in America, but it tends to be narrowly politically correct. Thus, Hollywood dares not make a ‘racist’ movie because of community pressures. The Hollywood studio that remakes THE BIRTH OF A NATION would be ostracized and boycotted. Like Don Imus, its makers would feel compelled to apologize. (Of course, while anti-black, anti-gay, and anti-Jewish ‘racist’ movies are not allowed, anti-Muslim and anti-white-male movies are still made aplenty by Jewish-run Hollywood.) But the idiocy of political correctness shows the danger inherent in the culture of shame. In its zeal to shame the shameful, it sometimes ends up throwing the baby out with the bath water. This was evident with anti-communism in the 1950s. It was one thing to go after real communists, but the zealous attempt to smear and shame everyone suspected of ties to communists made for a sour political and social atmosphere. Similarly, the politically correct attempt to shame ‘hateful bigots’ ― and such people exist among all races ― has cast a wide net that catches anyone who dares to speak the truth on race. Thus, the courageous John Derbyshire is thrown into the same gutting boat as the likes of Don Black of Stormfront idiocy.
Even the culture of shame has been utterly corrupted, not least in the reversal of values. In the past, white women who went with Negroes were made to feel shame as race-traitors, but today, such trashy women are hailed while white women who remain true to their racial heritage and identity are shamed as ‘racists’. Some might say interracism is progress, and personally, I’m not necessarily opposed to it as long as it doesn’t threaten the racial core of a people. I mean it’s not going to harm Japan or Germany if some non-Japanese or non-Germans mix with their people. But if TOO MANY foreigners arrive in those countries and mix with the natives, the unique native traits can be lost and for good. Also, not all interracisms are the same. Interracism with blacks is never on an equal basis. Indeed, it is a form of race-ism. Why do white women go with Negro men? Because she’s going ‘beyond color’? No, she specifically goes with a Negro because she finds the Negro stud to be racially superior to the flabby soft white male in the realm of athleticism and sexuality. Why do black women prefer black men over white men and Mexican men? Because the skanky biatch finds the white boy racially too soft and dweeby and the Mexican boy too short and stubby. And of course, non-black men don’t like black women with ape-like faces and baboonish shrill hollering voices.
Also, blacks have never been able to build or maintain any kind of modern civilization, and this is largely due to genetic factors. Most blacks are too wild and too dumb. Therefore, it is civilizational suicide for any people, race, or nation to heavily mix with blacks. Just look at what extensive race-mixing with blacks did for Brazil.
Even blacks with white genes tend to be wild and crazy: Cornel West, Jeremiah Wright, Benjamin Jealous, Patricia Williams, etc. Even if a person is 80% white and only 20% black, the wild black side can override the white side. It’s like if you mix a gallon of ice cream with two cloves of garlic, you’re gonna taste more garlic than the ice cream. Jigger-jiverishness is that potent and foul. Look at Louis Farrakhan, who may actually be more white than black. But his devilish black side totally controls whatever white side he has. White genes are ‘feminine’ and ‘submissive’ before the black genes. When they mix, it’s the dark side that rules over the light side. Obama is more jigger than whitey; he might have white intelligence, but it serves his black soul. Something similar is true of whites and Jews. Whites, especially Northern European ones, tend to be rather ‘bland’ and ‘generic’ in their personality. In contrast, Jews have very wily and aggressive personalities. Thus, when white genes mix with Jewish genes, the aggressive Jewish side tends to win over the white side. Look at Barbra Streisand. She’s blonde, so she must be part ‘Aryan’. But in terms of personality, she’s a totally disgusting Jewess. It’s like if you mix milk with coffee, you taste the coffee more than the milk even if there’s more milk than the coffee. Jewish personality is just more potent and powerful than the white personality. Sacha Baron Cohen may be only half-Jewish, but his Jewish side overrides the goy side. Christopher Hitchens may have been only 1/4 or 1/8 Jewish, but it was as if he was driven by a Jewish ego all his life. (But it’s okay for blacks and Jews to insist on racial solidarity, and it’s okay for gays to call for an exclusive world of their own.) In the past, it was shameful to be a gay guy who stuck his sexual organ into the fecal hole of other men. Today, such a fruit-boy is promoted as a hero-saint while people who find ‘gay sex’ gross are shamed and demeaned as ‘phobic’.
Also, shame itself is an object of shame in some circles, as if shamelessness is the natural and healthy way to be, which explains nonsense like ‘gay pride parade’ and ‘slut walk parades’. In truth, both sexuality and shame are natural, just like love and hate are natural and just like fear and trust are natural. People naturally feel sexual feelings, and excessive repression of it can be unhealthy. But people also naturally feel shame, and the extreme repression of shame is also unhealthy. For example, if someone farts and belches in public, then takes his or her clothes off, and then masturbates for all to see and pretends to feel no shame, he or she is really repressing his or her shame. What our culture practices is the shaming of shame, as if it’s shameful to feel shame. So, skanky sluts will shame a decent girl for feeling shame(or feeling ‘repressed’), and so the good girl feels peer pressure to suppress her healthy shame and instead to dress/act like a lowlife skank too. Though “You’re the One that I Want” is a pretty good song, I thought Olivia Newton-John was better and more appealing as a good girl than as the smoking leather-clad ‘bad girl’ in GREASE. I mean there’s no way Mudonna can possibly feel genuine pride for all the skanky shit she’s done over the years ― like fiddling her poon on stage with a Coke bottle. Have a Coke and a smile? I think her ultra-slutty acts have really been desperate acts to repress her natural shame. She felt shame acting like a trashy whore but couldn’t face it, and so she repressed it by acting even more skanky, but that only made her act more skanky to repress more shame. And now, we have a parody of Mudonna called Lady Gaga.
Some people on the ‘Right’ seem to think that the problems of capitalism can be fixed with more capitalism ― lower taxes, more free markets, and etc. ― , but even if they may be correct in their warning about the growing power of statism, they are really missing the point. In a pluralistic society like the US, capitalism should just be an ECONOMIC system. As such, it constantly interacts with other institutions and forces of society, sometimes at odds and sometimes in tandem. For capitalism to remain healthy, society must be healthy, and so the success of capitalism really depends on the values and virtues maintained and reinforced by other sectors of society such as the church, family, schools, media, and etc. Capitalism cannot save a rotting civilization. Worse, it can hasten the rot because the logic of consumer-capitalism panders to vanity and hedonism, which when radicalized and made excessive, has an addictive narcotic effect on society. Does anyone think that the kids being exposed to Lady Gaga and Rap music ― products of the free market ― will be culturally, morally, or spiritually nourished? Some might say it’s just entertainment meant for fun, but given that so many kids grow up in broken homes with idiot parents who are moral zombies, what kind of ‘values’ are millions of young Americans absorbing from our filthy pop culture marketed and sold by top capitalists of the entertainment industry? Are they going to develop the study ethic or the work ethic or sense of responsibility? No, they learn nothing from trashy celebrities but the culture of greed. Just look at the black community and every punk wants to be an instant mega-star rapper with diamond-studded bling blings. And exactly what kind of morality is pushed by vain and hedonistic celebrity culture? The cult of trivialism, which, by the way, favors the two most privileged groups in America: Jews and gays. Today, even rappers are bending over to the gay agenda. But what does it mean that the rapper 50 cents is for ‘gay marriage’? So, the new image of liberal morality is some tattooed Negro thug bending over to be buttfuc*ed by Perez Hilton? How did it come to this? Indeed, the whole ‘gay marriage’ issue is the triumph of trivialism. Sex, as we all know, is a reproductive act. Evolution made sex pleasurable because it was in the interest of organisms to reproduce as much as possible. If they didn’t reproduce, the species would die out. But given the pleasurable nature of sex, it came to be enjoyed hedonistically. In the animal world, no organism knows that sex leads to pregnancy, and so animals have sex because they go into heat and derive pleasure from it. Humans are almost certainly the only organism that knows that sex leads to reproduction, and so they are the only ones who consciously have sex for the purpose of reproduction. But people cannot be having babies all the time, and so sex is often enjoyed as a pleasurable act among humans. Even so, the basic truth of sexuality is it exists in the first place because of the need to reproduce. And indeed the pleasure inherent in sexuality was made possible by evolution to facilitate reproduction. Now, while it would be thick-skulled to insist that sex must ONLY be for the purpose of reproduction ― as some religious orders do ― , it is downright lame-brained to reduce sex to nothing but a pleasurable pursuit, thereby falling into the trap of trivialism. That sex is basically meant to be reproductive but can also be enjoyed for pleasure is true. Thus, one can enjoy sex without having children while acknowledging the centrality of the reproductive need in sex. But when sexual pleasure is entirely divorced from its basic biological basis, we have stuff like the sexual equivalence of real sex and ‘homo-sex’. Thus, sex becomes trivialized from a necessary biological act that comes with pleasure to a trivial pleasurable act rooted in no meaningful purpose. If hedonism is all that matters in sexuality, then ‘homo-sex’ becomes the equal of real sex, and fecal penetration between gay boys serves as a valid basis for marriage. That such nonsense has become the core of modern Western morality should be enough to make people sick, but don’t expect an infantilized population to know the difference between a basic truth and a trivial inanity. The infantilization of the public and the trivialization of values go hand in hand.
CONTINUED. Click HERE for Part 2.
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